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Drawn bv Emma Roche. 



Abache. 



Historic Sketches of 
the South 



By 

Emma Langdon Roche 



Drawings and Photographs by Author 



Ube "Rnfcfterbocftcr press 

New York 
1914 



;/- 



Copyright 



EMMA LANGDON ROCHE 
1914 



/, 



Ube IftnfcRcrbocfter presfi, "P.cw Korfi 

AUG 15 1914 

© CI, A 3 8 (M) 00 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Beginnings of American Slavery . i 

II. Early Legislation against the Slave 

Traffic ..... 19 

III. Illegal Traffic in Slaves . . 49 

IV. Preparations for "Clotilde's" 

Voyage ..... 65 

V. The Capture of the Tarkars . 74 

VI. Voyage of the "Clotilde" . . 84 

VII. The Return ..... 92 

VIII. The Tarkars at Dabney's Planta- 
tion ...... 98 

IX. Tarkar Life in America . . 103 

X. Impressions of Alabama in 1846' . 129 

^ Reprinted jrom ''South Atlantic Quarterly," July, igo8. 



Ill 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



\bache .... 


. Frontispiece i/ 


Drawn by Emma Roche. 




POLEETE .... 


. 73 / 


Drawn by Emma Roche. 




Abache and Kazoola . 


. . .79^ 


Map Drawn by Kazoola 


89 ^ 


Kazoola .... 


. 97 V^ 


Drawn by Emma Roche. 




Wreck of the "Clotilde." . 


. 103 ^ 


Charlee .... 


. 109^ 


Olouala .... 


. . .117^ 


Drawn by Emma Roche. 




Charlee, Head of the Tarkars 


127 v^ 


Drawn by Emma Roche. 




Kazoola .... 


. . . .3. ^ 


Zoom A, the Last Tarkbar . 


. 139 



(7) Tarkar Village. (2) Dahomey's Land, (j) 
Wavering line showing stealthy march of Dahomey- 
ans through forest. {4) Route by which captive 
Tarkars were taken to the sea. (5), (<5), (7), {8), 
Eko, Budigree, Abach^, Whydah, towns through 
which Tarkars passed. {g) River. {id) Beach 
and sea. 



/ 



Historic Sketches of the 
South 

CHAPTER I 

THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY 

To fully understand the opposition of thought 
wherein our "irrepressible conflict" had its incep- 
tion and lay so long in embryo, to burst forth at 
last in the awfiil and bloody travail of a nation 
divided and at arms, some knowledge of the his- 
tory and psychology of the peoples who settled 
the American colonies is necessary; for a nation's 
cataclysms are not spontaneously generated, but 
are the result of forces which though for genera- 
tions are silent and hidden are gathering strength 
under the evils of superstition, oppression, or 
fanaticism, and only need such an explosive as 
the tongue of a Danton, Robespierre, Garrison, 
Beecher, or Stowe to hnrl the people into death 
and desolation. 



\ 



2 Historic Sketches of the South 

The early settlers who have left their impress on 
American life and character were of the same 
country and traditions, but their manners and 
ideals had been developed by the opposing forces 
which began to stir England during the Renais- 
sance — a himdred and fifty years before the Refor- 
mation — forces of which our own Civil War seems 
as direct a sequence as were the religio-political 
feuds of the i6th and 17th century England. In 
the New World the exponents of these contrasting 
forces were divided for the first century and a half 
by what afterwards became known as Mason's 
and Dixon's Line and by vast areas of uninhabited 
wilderness. 

Virginia was no Mecca for the religiously or 
politically oppressed, but drew to her soldiers of 
fortune — men impelled by a spirit of adventure, 
or those who for some delinquency wished to lose 
their identity in the vast, unknown New World; 
among them were many gentlemen who more often 
than not possessed the vices and follies of a corrupt 
age. The first who became permanent settlers 
were divided on the outward voyages by jealousies 
and dissensions. These differences were carried 



Beginnings of American Slavery 3 

into the colony ; aggravated by the greed and self- 
ishness of those placed in authority, they became 
greater hardships than the illness, starvation, and 
Indian treacheries which hampered early progress. 
There were "poor gentlemen, Tradesmen, Serving- 
men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit 
to spoyle a Commonwealth, than either begin one, 
or but helpe to maintain one. For when neither 
the feare of God, nor the law, nor shame, nor dis- 
pleasure of their friends could rule them here, 
there is small hope ever to bring one in twenty of 
them ever to be good there. Notwithstanding, 
I confesse divers amongst them, had better mindes 
and grew much more industrious than was ex- 
pected." ^ Amid treacheries and deceits, John 
Smith stands forth a hero. Through his thought 
and action the colony not only survived the vi- 
cissitudes of fire, starvation, and massacre, but 
was saved from itself, for the evils of its own 
lawless, disturbing elements were greater dangers 
than those which came from without. The hope 
of gold was ostensibly the colony's raison d'etre: 
"The worst of all was our gilded refiners with 

* Smith's Historie of Virginia. 



4 Historic Sketches of the South 

their golden promises made all men their slaves 
in hope of recompenses; there was no talke, no 
hope, no worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine 
gold, loade gold, such a bruit of gold, that one 
mad fellow desired to be buried in the sands least 
they should by their art make gold of his bones." 
This search for gold proved futile; in 1 615 the land 
was parceled off to each settler in fifty-acre lots, 
tobacco was planted, and thus began Virginia's 
prosperity. 

Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the 
first Columbian voyagers and into England by 
Raleigh and Drake. Despite the strong social and 
religious pressure — even King James instituting a 
propaganda which led him to write the Counter- 
blast to Tobacco — the habit spread with alarming 
rapidity, and was not confined to the men 
alone; chewing and smoking were indulgences 
common to the older women, while snuff was the 
favorite with the younger ones. This new taste 
created a demand which increased Virginia's popu- 
lation and greatly extended her cultivated fields. 
Women were scarce, and the planters growing 
rich had a natural desire to return to England. 



Beginnings of American Slavery 5 

This, however, was obviated by the importation 
of widows and virgins who were shipped to the 
colony as any other cargo. The nature of this 
bartering, which is unique in American history, 
may best be described from a letter, dated August 
21, 1 62 1, which accompanied one of these cargoes 
of colonial dames: "We send you in this ship 
one widow and eleven maids for wives for the 
people of Virginia. There hath been especial 
care had in the choice of them, for there hath not 
any one of them been received, but upon good 
recommendations . 

"In case they can not be presently married, we 
desire that they be put in several households that 
have wives, till they can be provided with hus- 
bands. There are near fifty more which are 
shortly to come, are sent by our most honorable 
lord and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton (the 
patron of Shakspere), and certain worthy gentle- 
men, who taking into consideration that the plant- 
ations can never flourish till families be planted, 
and the respects of wives and children fix these 
people on the soil, therefore have given this fair 
beginning for the reimbursing those charges. It 



6 Historic Sketches of the South 

is ordered, that every man that marries them give 
one hundred and twenty pounds of the best leaf 
tobacco for each of them. 

"Though we are desirous that the marriage be 
free according to the law of nature, yet we would 
not have these maids deceived and married to 
servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as 
have means to maintain them. We pray you, 
therefore to be as a father to them in this business 
not enforcing them to marry against their wills." 

Labor for the ever-increasing fields was another 
problem confronting the planter. King James 
decided that the London Company should solve 
this by transporting to Virginia English convicts, 
who thus removed from old environments and 
temptations might form a valuable industrial 
asset. Only one shipload of a hundred was sent, 
for about the same time a Dutch man-of-war 
arrived at Jamestown (August, 1619) and twenty 
negro slaves were sold to the planters. Qualms 
about such a transaction could scarcely be ex- 
pected, for through all historic times it was only 
as a slave that the negro had been associated with 
other races. In ancient times he had been sub- 



Beginnings of American Slavery 7 

servient to the Egyptians, bought for the Cartha- 
ginian galleys; slave to Assyrian, Arabian, Indian, 
Greek, Etruscan, and Roman; and in eariy Chris- 
tian centimes sold by the Venetians to the Moors 
of Spain. ^ 



» " Their features are recorded by their ancient enemies, never 
by themselves. Egyptian kings, who from earliest times of 
antiquity, came often into collision with the blacks, and had 
them figured as defeated enemies, as prisoners of war, and as sub- 
ject nations bringing tribute. Their grotesque features, so much 
differing from the Egyptian type, made them a favorite subject 
for sculptural supports of thrones, chairs, vases, etc.; or painted 
under the soles of sandals, of which instances abound in museums 
as well as in the larger works on Egypt. . . . The other artistical 
nations of antiquity knew little of the negro race. They did not 
come before Solomon's epoch into immediate and constant con- 
tact with it. We see soon after, however, a negro in an Assyrian 
battle scene of the time of Sargon, at Korsabad. He might have 
been exported from Memphis by Phoenician slave-dealers to 
Asia, where he fell fighting for his master against the Assyrians. 
. . . On the remarkable relief of the tomb of Darius Hystaspes, at 
Persepolis, we have the negro as a representative of Africa. 
The Greeks seldom drew the blacks; still, on beautiful vases of 
the British Museum, we meet with the well known negro features 
in a battle scene. Another such vase with the representation of 
Hercules slaying negroes has been published by Mecali. Etrus- 
can potters, who liked to draw Oriental types, molded vases in 
the shape of a negro head and coupled it sometimes with the head 
of white males or females. The British Museum contains 
several of these very characteristic utensils. . . . We possess 
effigies of negroes drawn by six different nations of antiquity: 
Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, 
from about the eighteenth century B.C. to the first centuries of 
our era, which all speak for the unalterable constancy of the 
negro type such as in our day." — Nott and Gliddon's Indigenous 
Races of the Earth. 



8 Historic Sketches of the South 

When the existence of new lands became known 
and labor was needed for their development, the 
negro's native country became a himting ground 
where he was not only stalked by the Dutch and 
Portuguese, but by the French and English who 
also had posts for that purpose in Africa. In fact 
the English, including therein the colonists of New 
England, became more extensively engaged in 
the traffic than all other slave-trading European 
nations combined. Compunctions about slavery 
as about many other things came only with the 
moral awakening of a later generation. "Scarcely 
any one seems to have regarded the trade as wrong. 
Theologians had so successfiilly labored to produce 
a sense of the amazing, I might almost say gener- 
ical, difference between those who were Christians 
and those who were not, that to apply to the latter 
the principles that were applied to the former, 
woiild have been deemed a glaring paradox. If 
the condition of the negroes in this world was 
altered for the worse, it was felt that their pros- 
pects in the next were greatly improved. Besides, 
it was remembered that, shortly after the deluge 
Ham had behaved disrespectfiilly to his drunken 



Beginnings of American Slavery 9 

father, and it was believed that the Almighty had, 
in consequence, ordained negro slavery."* The 
utility of the negro being at once proven, African 
slavery had become something of an institution in 
Virginia, before the Mayflower with its handful of 
men, women, and children landed on Plymouth 
Rock. 

The stern, uncompromising attitude of these 
people in whom there was no quibbling with right 
or wrong as they perceived it, which gave them 
the physical courage to endure persecution, muti- 
lation, and even death, was the restdt of the religious 
agitations which began in England with Wycliffe 
and were directed against the oppressions and 
corruptions which flourished within the Church's 
powerful organization. Though suppressed, the 
leaven had sifted down to the people who, stulti- 
fied by centuries of grossest superstition, had 
silently and patiently borne the yoke. In the stir- 
rings of this religious Renaissance the book that 
reached them was Wycliffe's translation of the 
Bible; this gave to them the Semitic conception 
of God — the one God — which the voices of those 

' Lecky, Rationalism in Europe. 



10 Historic Sketches of the South 

"primitive Puritans the Prophets" had saved from 
the obHterating dangers of idolatry and supersti- 
tion. The stolid somberness of the Northern races 
responded to the majestic swing of this wonderful 
collection of Hebrew documents which traced a 
people's struggles and thought development. Some 
of its characters as Huxley says of "Jepthah, Gid- 
eon, and Sampson are men of the old heroic stamp, 
who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga 
as where they are." Stray chapters sometimes 
came into the possession of some yeoman who 
was f ortimate enough to read ; in silence and sec- 
recy, when the day's work was done, there would 
gather round him eager listeners. To know what 
this book's message meant to them, one needs 
but read their subsequent history. To hear it, 
possess it, and believe it, they suffered the diabol- 
ical tortures and fiendish perpetrations which at 
once made martyrs and tyrants of men, and which 
laid in England the foundation of what Ranke 
calls the "heroic age of Protestantism in Western 
Europe." Of this breed were the Pilgrims of 
Plymouth Rock. Their inherent independence 
had been fostered by a long exile in Leyden ; there 



Beginnings of American Slavery ii 

the old Teutonic spirit of freedom had survived, 
and had given her men that sublime courage and 
determination, when besieged by the Duke of 
Alva and starving, "that rather than yield they 
would devour their left arms to enable them to 
continue the defense with their right."' Ley den 
afterwards became a haven for those of other coun- 
tries who, breaking from prescribed thought, dared 
to act accordingly. It was also a university center ; 
political and religious tenets were subjects of com- 
mon debate. Robinson who became one of the 
Pilgrim fathers took an active part in these 
discussions. 

To these exiles the New World became a hope. 
Though homeless, they were loyal to James. 
While petitioning the London Company for 
lands, they begged of him the freedom to there 
worship God according to their own consciences. 
Though this was not actually granted it was per- 
mitted. An unkindly fate seemed to preside over 
their voyage — buffeting storms drove them farther 
north than their proposed destination; some his- 
torians state they were purposely steered out of 

' Ranke, History of the Popes. 



12 Historic Sketches of the South 

their course by their Dutch pilot, and were forced 
to land on Plymouth Rock. 

By a solemn covenant entered into aboard ship, 
they agreed that while they would be faithful to 
the English Crown, the polity they would establish 
among themselves would be an ideal state — a 
community of interests — fascinating as expoimded 
by Plato, More, and Rousseau, but unfeasible for 
human nature as yet evolved since complete 
barbarism. United by a common faith — gloomy, 
austere — putting aside as mortal sin all the joys 
of life — ^forced to endure together in a wild, bleak, 
strange land, starvation, disease, frightful cold, 
and the terror of hostile Indians, by whom they 
would have probably been exterminated had not 
a deadly pestilence broken out among these 
savages — possibly no better opportunity for 
such an experiment has ever been offered civilized 
man. But among them too was the natural in- 
equality of individuals which will probably always 
render futile and unenduring similar sociological 
experiments. 

The Puritan settlements were gradually aug- 
mented by the persecuted from their native land, 



Beginnings of American Slavery 13 

and it would seem that they could at last possess 
the religious security and contentment for which 
they had so long clamored, but dissent had be- 
come second nature; combativeness seemed essen- 
tial to zeal, and as there was no Established or 
Roman Chujch at which to hurl themselves, their 
own tenets became mooted points; bitter differ- 
ences arose. They showed themselves as intoler- 
ant in the New World as they had been intolerable 
in the Old, and those without the might to 
prove their right were driven forth. In this 
manner Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New 
Hampshire were settled. Much of their later 
history has to do with religious bickerings, mutila- 
tions, and witch-burnings. It was an outgrowth 
of this same spirit which confronted the South 
for thirty years before the final rupture which 
resulted in the War of Secession. 

Thus from the beginning the North and the South 
were necessarily distinctive ; settled under different 
circumstances, the one drew from England the 
stem, severe, and rigorously religious, while the 
other became the habitat for the Puritan's oppo- 
site — the impecunious gentleman, the roistering 



14 Historic Sketches of the South 

cavalier, the insolvent debtor, and the Catholic 
nobleman — a class in which there had been a very- 
general "reversion from virtuous and noble man- 
hood to the lewdness of the ape and the cunning 
ferocity of the tiger." ^ In the New World 
all alike were brought face to face with a great, 
overshadowing nature which presented the 
diversified physical conditions along which each 
section's economic development would tend. Agri- 
culture in austere New England would have been 
a too uneven wrestling with nature; existence 
wrought from the soil meant unending toil and 
often heart-breaking disappointment, so the New 
Englander's pursuits became mercantile and sea- 
faring — occupations in which the negro could 
be of little value, but follov^ing England's in- 
itiative he found the slave-trade profitable, 
and the Southern planter a ready buyer. To 
repress Nature's exuberance, the fields of to- 
bacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and cane required 
man's watchful care, and the negro, inured 
through all previous generations to the sun and 
rain, the jungle and the swamp, properly directed, 

» Dean Farrar. 



Beginnings of American Slavery 15 

became, and still is, the ideal laborer for work 
of the soil. 

Since then our "mental endyses" have been 
many; we have associations for the prevention of 
cruelty to animals, and sympathetic and indignant 
thrills pass through us at sight of ill-treatment to 
one of these, so we cannot bring our attitude of 
to-day or of the last hundred years to judge the 
beginnings of American slavery. To i6th and 
17th century Europeans it was palpable that 
the difference between the negro and the man- 
like apes was no greater than that existing 
between the negro and themselves, and it was 
debatable "with that bruitishness which com- 
monly appeareth in all their actions whether the 
people generally may be thought to be men in the 
skins of beasts; or beasts created in the likenesse 
and shape of man."^ The sentimentality which 
obtained some years ago and which led to such 
bitter hatred and misunderstanding seems almost 
maudlin when that phase of the question in which 
the indescribable wretchedness of the negro in his 
native land is considered — his gross and pitiable 

» Heylyn's Cosmographie, 1657. 



i6 Historic Sketches of the South 

superstitions, his indifference to death and his regard 
for cruelty as a virtue; what slavery did for him 
seems analogous to what we suppose primitive man 
accomplished with the wolf — adopted it from the 
wild and made of it a faithful, domestic animal. 
True, the motives were utility and gain, but who 
can deny the mighty uplift in value and sagacity, 
both for the dog and the negro? Among the 
African tribes described in Pigafetta's account of 
Lopez's African Travels (1598), and spoken of by 
Heylyn in his Cosmographie(i6^j) , are the Anziques, 
"the cruellest Cannibals in the world; for they do 
not onely eat their Enemies, but their friends and 
Kinsfolk. And that they may be sure not to want 
these Dainties, they have shambles of man's 
flesh, as in other parts of Beef and Mutton. So 
covetous withall, that if their Slaves will yield but a 
penny more when sold joynt by joynt than if sold 
alive, they will cut them out, and sell them upon 
the shambles. Yet with these barbarous quali- 
ties they have many good ... of so great fidelity 
to their masters and to those which trust them, 
that they will rather choose to be killed than either 
abuse the trust, or betray their Masters. For 



Beginnings of American Slavery 17 

that cause more esteemed by the Portugals than 
other Slaves." So even the most bloodthirsty- 
possessed potentially the quality of faithfulness, 
which when he was removed from his natural 
environment — where for thousands of years he had 
not progressed — made all his later development 
possible, and which aside from the cases where 
there has been an infusion of white or Indian 
blood, is largely responsible for what the best type 
of American negro is to-day. It was this quality, 
fostered by care and kindness, that has filled 
Southern tradition with touching and oftentimes 
heroic incidents of the slave's devotion. When 
the old differences of Puritan and Cavalier, under 
other guises, called men to arms, it was to the 
fidelity of these blacks that the Southerner trusted 
wife, children, and home. That this trust was sel- 
dom violated is sufficient encomium for master and 
slave. Under the regime established in many 
places, after emancipation had converted the 
"slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperized 
man " (Huxley), when he was incited to open rebel- 
lion and nameless atrocities, to what sorrows would 
the desolated South have been subjected, had the 



i8 Historic Sketches of the South 

old status of master and slave been different? 
Had the South been guilty of the charges laid to 
her door, despite Klu-Klux Klans and other pre- 
cautions, the negro's temper would have been 
much the same as that of the French canaille, who 
during the Commune "drank blood to vomit 
crime." They had shown, in the San Domingo in- 
surrections, that revenge lay within their nature. 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST SLAVERY 

The Cavalier and adventurer in working out 
their destiny in the New World became purged of 
the foibles that continued to debauch their com- 
peers in England; among their descendants of a 
few generations were those men of unimpeachable 
honor and integrity of purpose who will be held 
forever as the highest types of American chivalry 
and manhood. Those of Virginia, with whom 
colonial slavery was most ancient, were the first 
to be aroused to the full ethical significance of the 
evil — to the grave injustice to the unfortunate 
lower race, and to the detriment to the moral 
nature of the higher. They were the first to at- 
tempt to legislate against the evil. In 1770, 
Virginia protested against the importation of 
slaves, but to no avail as royalty itself was finan- 
cially interested in the traffic. At the meeting 

of the delegates from each county of Virginia held 

19 



20 Historic Sketches of the South 

at Williamsburg in August, 1774, to consider 
British oppression and indignities, the second 
article of the protest resolved and agreed upon 
bore upon the slave traffic: "We will neither our- 
selves import nor purchase any slave, or slaves, 
imported by any person, after the first day of 
November next, either from Africa, the West 
Indies, or any other place." This meeting was a 
full one, and among the one hundred and eight 
signers — all prominent in Virginia life and annals — 
are Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George 
Washington, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, 
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Marshall, Thomas 
Randolph, and Francis Lightfoot Lee. The in- 
structions of Thomas Jefferson, with whom the 
abolition of slavery was always a great aim, to the 
Virginia delegates to the first Congress (August, 
1774), voiced the sentiments of Virginia's most 
thoughtful men: "For the most trifling reason, 
and sometimes for no reason at all, His Majesty 
has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. 
The abolition of domestic slavery is the great 
object of desire in those colonies, where it was, 
unhappily introduced in their infant state. But 



Early Legislation against Slavery 21 

previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we 
have, it is necessary to exclude all further importa- 
tions from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts 
to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing 
duties which might amount to a prohibition have 
been hitherto defeated by His Majesty's negative ; 
thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few 
British corsairs to the lasting interests of the 
American States, and to the rights of human nature 
deeply wounded by this inhuman practise." 

Not only was every effort of the Southern colo- 
nists opposed by England's monarch, but with the 
breaking out of open hostilities his agents were 
commissioned to arm and instigate the slaves 
against their masters. * Many lured by the prom- 
ise of land and freedom flocked to the British 
standard; they were sent into Nova Scotia. 
Suffering from cold and becoming discontented 
by the non-fulfillment of the promises of aggran- 

' " You may observe, by my proclamation, that I offer freedom 
to the blacks of all rebels that join me, in consequence of which 
there are between two and three hundred already come in, and 
those I form into corps as fast as they come in, giving them white 
officers and non-commissions in proportion." — Letter from Lord 
Dunmore to General Howe, dated Williamsburg, Va., Nov. 30, 
1775- 



22 Historic Sketches of the South 

dizement, they were finally sent to Sierra Leone, 
which in the following seventy-five years received 
the thousands taken by the British from the 
slavers. 

During this fearful crisis, Virginia's spirit to- 
wards these misguided people was one of mercy 
and humanitarianism. At the next convention it 
was resolved: "Whereas Lord Dunmore, by his 
proclamation, dated on board the ship William 
oflf Norfolk, the 7th day of November, 1775, hath 
offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are 
willing to join him, and take up arms against the 
good people of this colony, giving encouragement 
to a general insurrection, which may induce a 
necessity of inflicting the severest punishments 
upon these unhappy people already deluded by 
his base and insiduous arts, and whereas, by an 
act of the general assembly now in force in this 
colony, it is enacted, that all negro, or other slaves, 
conspiring to rebel or make insurrection, shall suf- 
fer death, and be excluded all benefit of clergy — 
we think it proper to declare, that all slaves who 
have been, or shall be seduced by his lordship's 
proclamation, or others to desert their masters' 



Early Legislation against Slavery 23 

service and take up arms against the inhabitants 
of this colony, shall be liable to such punishment 
as shall hereafter be directed by the convention. 
And to the end that all such, who have taken this 
unlawful and wicked step, may return in safety, 
to their duty, and escape the punishment due their 
crimes, we hereby promise pardon to them, sur- 
rendering themselves to Colonel William Woodford 
or any other commander of our troops, and not 
appearing in arms after the publication hereof. 
And we do further earnestly recommend it to all 
humane and benevolent persons in the colony, 
to explain and make known this offer of mercy 
to those unfortunate people." 

About this time, some feeling against American 
slavery, but more against the "aristocratic spirit 
of Virginia and the Southern colonists," stirred 
England, and a general enfranchisement of the 
slaves was proposed. Edmund Burke, in his 
famous speech of March 22, 1775, on the "Con- 
ciliation with America," touches on the incongruity 
of such a proposition of freedom coming from 
England : " Slaves as these unfortunate black people 
are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they 



24 Historic Sketches of the South 

not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that 
very nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with 
those masters is their refusal to deal any more in 
that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from 
England would come rather oddly, shipped to 
them in an African vessel, which is refused entry 
into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo 
of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be 
ciirious to see the Guinea captain attempt at the 
same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty 
and to advertise the sale of slaves." 

After throwing off the British yoke, the aboli- 
tion of the slave traffic and of slavery was still a 
paramount issue with these men of Virginia, and 
in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had 
drafted a clause relative to the moral obliquity; 
this clause, "reprobating the enslaving the in- 
habitants of Africa, was struck out in complai- 
sance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had 
never attempted to restrain the importation of 
slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to 
continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I be- 
lieve, felt a little tender under these censures ; for 
though their people had few slaves themselves, 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 25 

yet they had been very considerable carriers 
of them to others."' 

The disposition to emancipate was strongest in 
Virginia. In 1778, when Jefferson introduced a 
bill into the Assembly to stop the further importa- 
tion of slaves either by land or sea — a fine of one 
thousand pounds to be imposed upon any trans- 
gressor — it was passed without opposition and 
temporarily decreased the evil, but the time was 
not ripe for so philanthropic an innovation, and 
the bill was repealed by a later Assembly. Many 
of the younger men, however, were imbued with a 
realization of the evil, especially those who at 
William and Mary's College, had come under the 
influence of George Wythe, and it was to these 
that many looked for the ultimate righting of the 
wrong. Adumbrations of a future catastrophe 
broke upon Jefferson, but in that period of patri- 
otism, his almost prophetic vision saw not the dim, 
distant conflict as one arising out of the inherent 
differences of North and South, though this came 
to sadden his declining years, but rather as one of 
race against race: "Indeed I tremble for my 

' Autobiography of Tho^nas Jefferson. 



26 Historic Sketches of the South 

country when I reflect that God is just; that His 
justice cannot sleep forever; that considering num- 
bers, nature, and natural means only, a revolu- 
tion of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of 
situation is among possible events." The hope 
of eradicating negro slavery before it took a too 
vital hold upon the needs and institutions of his 
land stirred his patriotic and spiritual zeal; 
throughout a long life he took a vigorous stand 
against its growth. In 1784, when Virginia gave 
to the United States her portion of the Northwest 
Territory, it was Jefferson, assisted by Chase and 
Howell, who drafted and ardently advocated the 
ordinance that "after the year 1800 there should 
be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in 
any of the said States, otherwise than in punish- 
ment of crime." This was defeated, but led to 
the Ordinance of 1787 which forever excluded 
slavery from the territory northwest of the Ohio 
River. 

At the Constitutional Convention held in Phila- 
delphia in 1787, Jefferson urged as a step towards 
the ultimate ending of slavery, the immediate 
abolition of the importation, but Pinckney of 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 27 

South Carolina moved that the traffic be extended 
until 1808, and he was seconded by Gorman of 
Massachusetts. The motion carried in all the 
New England States, in South Carolina, Georgia, 
and Maryland; Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jer- 
sey, and Delaware were against it. This exigency 
of extending it for twenty years was a subject of 
grave apprehension to many thoughtful and patri- 
otic men who were slave owners, among them 
Jefferson, Washington, and Madison; though the 
attitude of the last was frequently ambiguous 
about many questions, he commits himself very 
fully on this clause of the Constitution in The 
Federalist: "It were doubtless to be wished that 
the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves 
had not been postponed until 1808, or, rather, 
that it had been suffered to have immediate 
operation. But it is not difficult to account either 
for the restriction on the general government or 
for the manner in which the whole clause is ex- 
pressed. It ought to be considered as a great 
point gained in favor of humanity, that a period 
of twenty years may terminate forever within 
these States, a traffic which has so long and so 



28 Historic Sketches of the South 

loudly upbraided the barbarism of modem 
polity." 

It may be assumed that the majority of those 
engaged in framing the Constitution regarded 
slavery as a domestic problem nearing its end, 
and it was a policy which at that time received 
more vehement denimciation from men of the 
South than those of the North, probably because 
a part of the North was actively engaged in the 
traffic and that the humanitarians of the South, 
bom in the midst of slavery, were not only awake 
to the ethical significance of the evil, but were 
averse to raising within their midst thousands 
of an alien race. That the disposition to discon- 
tinue all avenues which led to a continuation of 
slavery was not more general was incomprehensible 
to Jefferson, and absolutely out of harmony with 
the spirit of freedom which permeated American 
life: "What a stupendous, what an incomprehen- 
sible machine is man ! who can endure toil, famine, 
stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindica- 
tion of his own liberty, and the next moment be 
deaf to all those motives whose power supported 
him through trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 29 

bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more 
misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebelHon 
to oppose. But we must await, with patience, 
the workings of an over-ruling Providence, and 
hope that that is preparing the deHverance of 
those, our suffering brethren. When the measure 
of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall 
have involved heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, 
a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and 
by diffusing light and liberality among their op- 
pressors, or at length, by his exterminating thun- 
der, manifest his attention to the things of this 
world, and that they are not left to the gmdance 
of a blind fatality."' 

This constitutional postponement did not 
even settle the question temporarily. The Quakers 
presented a memorial for the abolition of the 
slave trade to the very first Congress (1790). 
This was reported by a committee to the whole 
House; and after various amendments was re- 
turned with the following : 

"ist. That migration or importation of such 
persons, as any of the States now existing shall 

' Jefferson's observations to Meunier. 



30 Historic Sketches of the South 

think proper to admit, can not be prohibited by 
Congress prior to the year 1808. 

"2d, That Congress have no authority to inter- 
fere in emancipation of slaves or in the treatment 
of them within any of the States; it remaining 
with the several States alone to provide any regu- 
lations therein, which humanity and true polity 
may require." 

This was a perilous and critical time — a time of 
trial for the new Constitution — when the States, 
watchful and alert, were jealous of their rights, 
and the Quakers' action was regarded by many as 
a flagrant violation of those rights. Washington 
considered their petition inopportune, especially 
as the question had been recently disposed of and 
was contained in an article of the Constitution, 
and so expressed himself in a letter : ' ' The memorial 
of the Quakers [and a very malapropos one it was] 
has at length been put to sleep, and will scarcely 
awake before the year 1808." However, the 
Quakers' attitude was not equivocal, as was that 
of the Puritan New Englander. Their petition 
grew from earnest convictions — convictions which 
were deep-rooted before they came to America, 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 31 

for they had expressed their repugnance to the 
English slave trade in 1671, and after coming to 
America had discouraged participation in slavery 
as early as 1696; in 1776 they placed their ulti- 
matum upon it by excluding from membership 
any Quaker slaveholder. 

This constitutional extension of the slave 
traffic closed all possibility of the question ever 
being settled amicably. Short-sightedness can 
scarcely be charged to those responsible, for at 
that time there was no thought of an acquisition 
of territory on the south and southwest, and the 
cultivation of cotton was still in its infancy. Be- 
fore another decade Eli Whitney had invented 
the cotton-gin ; this gave an impetus to the growing 
of cotton; agriculture in the South was revolu- 
tionized. To make way for the industry Georgia 
ceded her western territory to the United States 
and a tide of Southern immigration from the older 
centers of Virginia and the Carolinas rapidly 
flowed into Alabama and Mississippi. The wan- 
derlust of a hardy, pioneer ancestry was in these 
men's veins. Accompanied often by gentle fami- 
lies, their household goods, and their negroes they 



32 Historic Sketches of the South 

started overland. By long and tedious journey- 
ings, across mountain, stream, and swamp — 
through seemingly boundless stretches of majestic 
pines — sometimes encoimtering hostile Indians 
and again exchanging friendly courtesies with the 
friendly Choctaws and Chickasaws, they reached 
the new frontier, and established themselves along 
the river courses. Others came by sailing vessels, 
and passing through the French and Spanish 
cities of Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, 
followed the river courses into the interior. The 
log cabins which sprang up in the wilderness, 
were soon supplanted by comfortable, substantial 
homes frequently built of brick made upon the 
plantations or of hand-hewn lumber ; each became 
a nucleus of activities around which all things nec- 
essary for the maintenance of life were produced. 
On the well-ordered plantations the African was 
not only field laborer and faithful domestic, 
but became cobbler, mason, carpenter, and a 
spinner and weaver of cotton and wool. In this 
virgin region, far removed from the life and influ- 
ences of the older States, there grew up a vital and 
mutual dependence between master and slave; 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 33 

as such, each was necessary to the other; but it 
was not a combination out of which sentiments for 
the ultimate freedom of the negro were apt to 
grow ; and it was these who were farthest removed 
from the later machinations of the Abolitionists, 
who were most bitter and strenuous in their oppo- 
sition. In this close relation which in all but rare 
exceptions was a kindly one, the Southerner came 
to know the negro as the negro then could not 
know himself, realized his limitations, directed 
him along useful lines, and knew how rapidly he 
would revert were the civilizing and humanizing 
influence of slavery as it existed in the South 
removed. In later years when Southerners stood 
before a questioning world, there was no sophistry 
in the protests of those who declared that slavery 
was beneficial, and it was an argument resting 
upon truth that the Southern negro's condition 
was happier than that of the laboring classes in 
other parts of the world. 

European events also conspired towards an 
extension of slavery. After the French troops, 
already depleted by yellow fever, were defeated 

by the negro insurgents at San Domingo, Napo- 
3 



34 Historic Sketches of the South 

leon realized the uncertainty of France retaining 
the great Louisiana Territory which had been 
but recently repossessed from Spain. To cir- 
cumvent the English, who had long coveted this 
domain, Napoleon, in 1803, offered it to the United 
States for fifteen million dollars. American settlers 
along the Mississippi had already experienced diffi- 
culties with the Spanish who claimed complete 
control of the Mississippi River south of the Yazoo, 
and though Congress had been given no constitu- 
tional prerogative for acquiring new territory, 
Jefferson, who was then President, saw the varied 
importance of this acquisition, and successfully 
and with very little criticism directed the nego- 
tiations. This brought into the United States, 
not only a vast terra incognita, but an extensive 
Franco-Spanish civilization stretching along the 
Gulf of Mexico, with French outposts scattered 
along the great river systems and reaching into 
the very heart of America. 

The divergence of this civilization from that of 
English colonization was not only racial, but its 
tone had been qualified by the spirit in which the 
settlements had been made and the polity adopted 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 35 

by each. It possessed nothing of New England's 
austerity, or of Virginia's somewhat stohd state- 
liness, but was characterized by a graceful pic- 
turesqueness and a delightful bonhomie. The 
black-robed priest if not the pathfinder who 
blazed the way for French settlements was usu- 
ally the comrade and companion of those v/ho did. 
Religion and settlement went hand in hand. 
None of the torturing and enslaving methods 
used by the Puritans to force upon the natives a 
cold, stem religion, unattractive even to other 
Christian sects, or by the Spanish in Mexico and 
Florida, were resorted to by the French, Where- 
ever there was a priest. Mass began the day. The 
mystic ceremony, performed in the dewy fresh- 
ness of early morning within the forest's depths, 
or on a strip of sandy beach beside the mighty 
waters; the solemn gestures of the celebrant and 
the adoring attitude of the worshippers appealed 
to the Indian imagination, and the French were 
soon importuned to invoke their Great Spirit to 
aid the red man, to bring rain or to heal the sick 
or wounded. 

From Mobile, the oldest and for many years the 



36 Historic Sketches of the South 

chief French settlement, the genius of Iberville 
and Bienville Lemoyne, aided by ardent and inde- 
fatigable missioners, reached out to remote Indian 
tribes, conciliating and binding them as allies. 
They dealt fairly with the Indian, but in cases of 
treachery used the Indian's own method of punish- 
ment. From the Indians they also adopted the 
custom of making slaves of hostile captives. 
Negro slavery also existed in these settlements 
from very early years, for in the quaint baptismal 
register of 1 704-1 778, forming a part of the 
archives of the Catholic Cathedral of Mobile, is 
recorded the baptism of two negro children be- 
longing to Bienville in 1707, and in the same year 
a negro woman belonging to him bore the first 
negro child bom on the Gulf coast. * 

Gold was not found, nor did the French settle- 
ments on the Gulf lay in the wake of the treasure- 
ladened Spanish galleons, but the climate was 
benign, the lands rich, and the forests afforded an 
abundance of food, and in times of scarcity Bien- 
ville sometimes quartered his soldiers among the 
friendly natives. There was leisure for the ameni- 

' Hamilton's Colonial Mobile. 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 37 

ties, and the priest and nun who had given up life 
and ambition in the Old World were not only the 
spiritual advisers and educators of the young of 
New France, but as missioners guided and in- 
structed the Indian and the slave. Their insti- 
tutions became asylums for the sick and desolate 
of any race, and to their influence may be traced 
the easy, happy condition of the negro slave 
among the French of Louisiana. There was that 
in the temperament of these French which while 
appropriating the Indian's and negro's usefulness 
at the same time beguiled and won them. An 
incident of a slave's heroic loyalty to the French 
is related by Gayarre in his Louisiana, After the 
French settlements passed under Spanish control, 
New Orleans revolted, and the leaders were sen- 
tenced to be shot; Jeannot the negro hangman 
cut off his right arm rather than raise it against a 
Frenchman. 

In March, 1724, Bienville issued a code, one 
clause of which forbade marriages between whites 
and blacks. Such marriages had taken place, 
and had given rise to what afterwards became an 
extensive Afro-Latin population. In many places 



38 Historic Sketches of the South 

along the Gulf coast it is among these so-called 
Creoles who have clung to their original habita- 
tions along the river banks, the creeks, and bays, 
that the old French names are found and a patois 
spoken. The result of this amalgamation did not 
seem mongrel, but distinctive, and in their local 
history, covering two hundred years, during 
which time they have lived under five different 
flags, there has been a pride of race which has kept 
the original strain pure. Deeply religious, they 
have been characterized by honesty, frugality, 
and industry. They were never slaves, but were 
in many instances slave owners. 

A Societe des Amis des Noirs had been formed 
in Paris, in 1788. Its object was to end the slave 
trade and slavery, especially in San Domingo 
from which came many reports of cruelty and 
oppression. A little later, France in establishing 
the rights and equality of man passed through 
her awful revolution. Though Louisiana was in 
constant touch and sympathy with France, among 
her peaceful, pleasure-loving people no sentiment 
about negro freedom or equality seems to have 
been evolved. When this great territory passed 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 39 

into the United States, it carried with it its insti- 
tution of slavery, which, established as it was in 
the habits and thoughts of these people, strength- 
ened slavery's hold upon the South, pushed fur- 
ther away, and complicated with added difficulties 
the fulfillment of the hope of those great Southern- 
ers who had looked for its gradual and peaceful ter- 
mination. In the government of this new territory 
we again meet with the large vision of Jefferson 
and his desire to curtail slavery. Outside import- 
ations were forbidden, and only slaves who had 
been brought to this country before 1798 could be 
carried by their masters for the purpose of settle- 
ment into Louisiana. All others carried in would 
be freed and the penalty for each offense would 
be three hundred dollars. 

To prepare the seafaring interests for the 
statute of 1808, and to lead American sentiment 
to its acceptance. Congress in the early part of 
the same year (1803) prohibited after April i, 
1803, the importation of any persons of color, or 
the entry of any vessels containing such persons 
into those States whose laws already debarred 
such importation. Indians were not included in 



40 Historic Sketches of the South 

this prohibition. The penalty for the first viola- 
tion was a fine of one thousand dollars for every 
such person, one half to be appropriated to the 
United States and the other to be given to the 
informer. For the latter offense, the vessel and 
all appurtenances were to be confiscated by the 
United States, one half the net proceeds to be 
given to such "person or persons on whose 
information the seizure of such forfeiture shall 
be made." ' 

When New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, 
this statute obtained in all the Northern States. 
In their economy slavery was an incubus. This 
statute imposed no financial sacrifice on individu- 
als, for in most cases the relatively few slaves had 
been transferred and sold in the South. Though 
there were threatening party differences, as yet 
there seems no general feeling against slavery in 
those States to which it was peculiar, and such 
sentiments as were entertained were more abstract 
than those common in the South itself.'' Many 

' United States Statutes at Large. 

' "The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England who is now here 
soliciting donations for a college in Green County, in Tennessee, 
tells me that when he first determined to engage in this enterprise, 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 41 

Northern fortunes had been built upon the slave 
trade; though prohibiting the importation into 
their own States, numbers were still actively en- 
gaged in the traffic — and the Southern States 
were the only ports legally open to them, for an 
act forbidding the direct or indirect importation 
of slaves into foreign countries had become a 
United States statute in 1794. The South itself 
seldom engaged in this traffic — it was a degrada- 
tion to which her aristocratic tendencies could not 
stoop; a " nigger- trade " was taboo; and though 
slave vessels plied to and from her ports, they were 
usually a part of Yankee enterprise. 

Jefferson, to whom the question had so long 
been a momentous one, welcomed the time when 
the traffic would end, and in his sixth annual 

he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he 
meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one for persons 
in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams 
to put his name, he being then President, and the application 
going only for his name and not a donation. Mr. Adams, after 
reading the paper and considering, said, He saw no possibility 
of continuing the union of the States; that their dissolution must 
necessarily take place; that he therefore saw no propriety in 
recommending to New England men to promote a literary insti- 
tution in the South; that it was in fact gi%nng strength to those 
who were to be their enemies; and therefore he would have 
nothing to do with it." — Thomas Jefferson, The Anas, Dec. 13, 
1803. 



42 Historic Sketches of the South 

message to Congress, December 2, 1806, rejoiced 
"on the approach of the period at which you may- 
interpose your authority constitutionally, to with- 
draw the citizens of the United States from all 
further participation in those violations of himian 
rights which have so long continued on the un- 
offending inhabitants of Africa, and which the 
morality, the reputation, and the best interests of 
the country have long been eager to proscribe." 
With the first of January, 1808, it became un- 
lawful for any person of color to be imported into 
the United States or her territory; any person 
aiding or abetting such traffic to be fined five 
thousand dollars; also "any citizen of the United 
States, building, fitting out, equipping, loading 
or otherwise preparing or sending away any ship 
or vessel, knowing that the same shall be employed 
in such trade or business" shall pay twenty thou- 
sand dollars, a part to go to the United States and 
another to any person or persons who shall prose- 
cute the offender. Every vessel found engaged 
in the traffic was to be "seized, prosecuted, and 
condemned in any of the circuit courts or district 
courts where the said ship or vessel may be found 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 43 

or seized." The President was authorized to use 
the naval and revenue forces to enforce the statute. 
They were to cruise on the coast of the United 
States and her territories; to seize and bring to 
port vessels contravening the provisions of the 
act, the captain or commander to be prosecuted 
before any court of the United States having juris- 
diction thereof; and if convicted to be fined not 
more than ten thousand dollars, and to be subject 
to imprisonment to not more than four years. ^ 

These and further enactments of a like nature 
ended constitutionally the slave traffic in the 
United States. Many New Englanders had noth- 
ing further to gain ; there was no legitimate finan- 
cial emolument now standing between them and a 
realization of the ethical side of the slave question. 
Instead of lending a conservative help to those of 
the South who hoped by gradual and conciliatory 
methods to loose slavery's growing hold upon 
their institutions, through a curious psychological 
metamorphosis they began to look askance upon 
the South and its institution of slavery, and to 
affiliate in thought with the abolition movement 

' United States Statutes at Large. 



44 Historic Sketches of the South 

which iinder Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others 
was stirring England; forgetting in their zeal that 
the wrongs which Clarkson and Wilberforce were 
championing were the wrongs of which England 
and New England as slave traders had been the 
chief perpetrators. This growing sentiment was 
seized upon by politicians and played upon for 
party purposes. It was with increased apprehen- 
sion that they saw the extension of the slave 
interests which the purchase of Louisiana had 
necessitated, and the further representation these 
interests would be given as new States were formed 
from the slave territory. For a decade this jeal- 
ousy was kept within safe bounds by any pre- 
ponderance of representation being checkmated 
and balanced by the formation of a Free State. 
Yet this feeling was becoming rapidly contagious, 
spreading to many who had not previously thought 
of slavery, or who regarded it as a domestic policy 
to be settled by the Slave States individually and 
exclusively. With the development of the Mis- 
souri controversy, the temperamental divergence 
bom of several centuries of turmoil and turbulence 
in England, and too deep-rooted to be really dead, 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 45 

roused from the anesthesia of united effort against 
a common enemy and a subsequent enthusiasm 
for Union, and stood forth definitely defined as 
North and South. Forgetful of the give and take 
necessary for the harmonious existence of polities 
as of individuals, the country was still not large 
enough or the political interests sufficiently varied, 
for such differences to be conducive to well-being. 
In his Presidential farewell Washington warned 
his countrymen against a geographical division 
of interests: "In contemplating the causes which 
may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of 
serious concern, that any ground should have been 
furnished for characterizing parties by geographical 
discrimination, . . . northern and southern . . . 
Atlantic and western ; whence designing men may 
endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real 
difference of local interests and views. One of 
the expedients of party to acquire influence within 
particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions 
and aims of other districts. You cannot shield 
yourselves too much against the jealousies and 
heart-burnings which spring from these misrep- 
resentations; they tend to render alien to each 



46 Historic Sketches of the South 

other those who ought to be bound together by 
fraternal affection." To Jefferson, aged and wait- 
ing, this Missouri controversy and its adjustment, 
was the alarum in which he heard the death-knell 
of the Union, and in a letter to John Holmes, dated 
Monticello, April 22, 1820, he so expresses him- 
self: "I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have 
been so kind as to send me of the letter to your 
constituents on the Missouri question. It is a 
perfect justification to them. I had for a long 
time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any atten- 
tion to public affairs, confident they were in good 
hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark 
to the shore from which I am not far distant. But 
this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the 
night, awakened and filled me with terror. I 
considered it at once as the death-knell of the 
Union. It is hushed indeed, for the moment. 
But this is a reprieve only, not the final sentence. 
A geographical line, coinciding with a marked 
principle, moral and political, once conceived and 
held up to the angry passions of men, will never 
be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark 
it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious 



Early Legislation Against Slavery 47 

truth, that there is not a man on earth who would 
sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from 
this heavy reproach, in any practical way. The 
cession of that kind of property (for so it is mis- 
named) is a bagatelle, which would not cost me a 
second thought, if in that way a general emancipa- 
tion and expatriation could be effected ; and gradu- 
ally, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. 
But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we 
can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice 
is in one scale and self-preservation in the other. 
Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of 
slaves from one Free State to another would not 
make a slave of a single human being who would not 
be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater 
surface would make them individually happier, 
and proportionately facilitate the accomplish- 
ment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden 
on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence, 
too, from this act of power, would remove the 
jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress 
to regulate the condition of the different descrip- 
tions of men comprising a State. This certainly 
is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing 



48 Historic Sketches of the South 

in the Constitution has taken from them, and given 
to the General Government. Could Congress, 
for example, say that the non-freemen of Connec- 
ticut could be freemen, or that they shall not 
emigrate to another State? 

"I regret that I am now to die in the belief that 
the useless sacrifice of themselves of the generation 
of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness 
to their coimtry, is to be thrown away, by the 
imwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and 
that my only consolation is to be that I shall not 
live to weep over it. If they would dispassion- 
ately weigh the blessings they will throw away 
against an abstract principle, more likely to be 
effected by union than by scission, they would 
pause before they would perpetrate this act of 
suicide on themselves, and of treason against the 
hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful 
advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my 
high esteem and respect." 



CHAPTER III 

ILLEGAL TRAFFIC IN SLAVES 

Legislation against habits which by an evolu- 
tion of sentiment have become moral issues is 
always followed by flagrant violations, for men are 
usually loth to acquiesce in things which they 
consider a curtailment of their livelihood. For a 
century and a half, the slave traffic had been an 
immense source of revenue for a large class of 
citizens. Despite the constitutional prohibition, 
the imposition of heavy fines and the offer of large 
rewards, the traffic in negroes continued to flourish 
— nor was it carried on with any great degree of 
surreptitiousness. Vessels intended for this pur- 
pose were built with a reference to speed and were 
probably the fleetest craft afloat. 

In the early years of the Union the revenue and 
naval forces were necessarily small and the coast 
a vast and sparsely inhabited one. Algerian 
pirates called for a part of their strength, and their 

4 49 



50 Historic Sketches of the South 

energies were again directed against the British 
in 1 812; pirates harassed commerce off the South 
Atlantic States and in the Gulf of Mexico — Lafitte 
establishing a kingdom at Barataria, an island 
in the lower Mississippi, from which sailed many 
piratical expeditions, and where a brisk trade in 
slaves was carried on. Though our naval force 
seemed inadequate it had been singularly success- 
ful against these outside adversaries. These 
preoccupations seem scarcely sufficient excuse 
for the flourishing condition of the illegal traffic 
in slaves. Money, politics, and indifference ap- 
pear to have been a trinity that glossed over rot- 
tenness then as now. Obscure harbors and lonely 
shores were not always the destination of these 
hell-craft, but they sailed to and from the prin- 
cipal seaport towns. With scarcely an exception 
they were fitted up by New Englanders and New 
Yorkers and manned by down-east seamen; 
Rhode Island led with Connecticut, Massachusetts 
and New York as close seconds. The West Indies 
and Brazil offered a market, and some found their 
way into Southern ports, where, through the co- 
operation of an equally criminal class of Southern- 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 51 

ers, the unfortunate, contraband humans were 
sold. 

While the middle passage before 1808 was a 
veritable inferno, it was afterwards characterized 
by a barbarity which should have sickened the 
soul of all humanity, yet the voice and sentiment 
of humane, law-abiding Americans were not strong 
enough to make this traffic impossible. Cyrus 
King in a speech on the Missouri Question, in 
1 8 19, described the shameless situation: "It well 
might be supposed that the slave trade would in 
practice be extinguished; that virtuous men 
would by their abhorrence stay its polluted march 
and the wicked would be overawed by its potent 
punishment, but unfortunately the case is far 
otherwise. We have but melancholy proofs from 
unquestionable sources that it is still carried on 
with all the implacable ferocity — and insatiable 
rapacity — of former times. Avarice has grown 
more subtile in its evasions; and watches and 
seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather 
than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American 
citizens are steeped up to their very mouths (I 
scarcely use too bold a figure) in this stream of 



52 Historic Sketches of the South 

iniquity? They throng the coasts of Africa under 
the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, sometimes 
selling abroad their 'cargoes of despair,' and 
sometimes bringing them into some of our South- 
ern ports, and there, under the forms of law, de- 
feating the purpose of the law itself, and legalizing 
their inhuman but profitable adventures." 

Those so unfortunate as to have been brought 
into any of the Southern States were by the 
Constitution "subject to any regulations, not 
contravening the provisions of the act, which 
the legislatures of the several states or terri- 
tories at any time hereafter may make, for dis- 
posing of any such negro, mulatto, or person 
of color." As some extenuation for those 
Southern States, let it be asked. What was to 
be done with these unfortunate Africans? Bar- 
barians all — often of the lowest type — and 
sometimes cannibals — could they be given free- 
dom? The attention of thinking men was 
early directed to the status of the free black; 
how to place him to his own best advantage that 
his position as a citizen would not be equivocal; 
and to avoid arousing by his idle example or de- 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 53 

signing machinations, discord, dissatisfaction, and 
even mutiny among the slaves. In 1803, a coloni- 
zation plan was discussed in the Virginia Assembly ; 
this led to a correspondence on the subject between 
Madison, who was then Governor, and President 
Jefferson. Out of this was bom in 1816, what 
soon became a very active organization, the 
American Colonization Society. After negotia- 
tions, lands were secured on the west coast of 
Africa at Cape Mesurada. There the society 
established a colony to which such free blacks as 
desired might be conveyed, and which was also 
to receive the Africans taken from slavers, or 
those found to have been smuggled into the coun- 
try by traders. During all the years of the soci- 
ety's activities the unfortunates reached by their 
clemency were small in proportion to those sur- 
reptitiously sold into bondage ; this was due to the 
powerful abettors — often legalized ones — of the 
traffic. A lack of intelligent forethought was 
responsible for disheartening results in their early 
efforts at colonization. But the society's efforts 
at home were more successful by fostering a spirit 
against the trade, and it was instrumental in 



54 Historic Sketches of the South 

regulating the laws in some of the Southern States 
which were so ambiguous as to aid rather than 
crush the trade. ^ In 1819, Congress stipulated 
that contraband Africans were to be taken from 
State jurisdiction to become wards of the Govern- 
ment, and the President was authorized to make 
"such regulations and arrangements as he may- 
deem expedient for the safe-keeping, support, and 
removal beyond the limits of the United States, 
of all such negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color, 
as may be so delivered and brought within their 
jurisdiction. And to appoint a proper person or 
persons, residing upon the coast of Africa, as 
agent or agents for receiving negroes, etc., deliv- 
ered from on board vessels, seized in the prosecu- 
tion of trade by commanders of the United States 
armed vessels." In 18 19, Congress acting upon a 
memorial presented by the Colonization Society, 
declared the slave traffic to be piracy punishable 
with death. In this same year the statute of 1809 
was enlarged and made more stringent and 
the President was empowered to send armed 
vessels along the African coast. One hundred 

' North American Review, February, 1824. 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 55 

thousand dollars was appropriated for this 
purpose. 

Rigid legislation only multiplied the horrors, 
without curtailing the evil. With death as the 
penalty, when there was danger of apprehension, 
it was not uncommon for the whole cargo to be 
thrown into the sea. This, compared with the 
tortures of frequent passages, was almost humane. 
To escape the terrors, numbers would embrace 
death if given the opportunity. Yet the trade 
was highly profitable even if three out of four 
cargoes were lost. 

By the Treaty of Ghent (1815), the United 
States and Great Britain agreed separately and 
individually to use their influence to suppress 
the trade. Yet later the United States threw 
sheltering arms around those of her citizens whom 
Britain had reason to suspect — maritime rights, the 
statement that Southern slave owners might make 
voyages accompanied by their slaves, or the plea 
of slave hands on merchant ships — often protected 
malefactors. After Parliament abolished slavery 
from the British colonies, the American brig 
Comet was stranded off the Bahamas (1830), as 



56 Historic Sketches of the South 

was the Encomium in 1834 and the Enterprise in 
1835; slaves were found aboard in each case and 
liberated by the English. Americans raised a 
loud cry. After a correspondence covering nearly 
ten years Great Britain agreed to pay for the 
Africans, and admonished her colonies on the 
southern borders of the United States to "main- 
tain good neighborhood." As the years went by 
and all so-called efforts proved ineffectual, Eng- 
land, with a sincere desire to end the traffic, de- 
veloped an assumption that it was her especial 
privilege, and inaugurated a right of search, or 
visit, against the very nature of which it was 
imperative that the United States should protest. 
In many cases this necessity became imavoidably 
another protection for malefactors. As the flags 
of various countries were constantly used to cover 
the traffic, England in 1803 united with Russia, 
France, Austria, and Prussia for the suppression, 
and acquired supervision along the African coast, 
maintaining a right of search. America was 
not approached on this subject, though Lord 
Palmerston boldly declared to the world England's 
right to "visit" American merchantmen (Aug. 13, 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 57 

1 841). This was later sustained by Lord Aber- 
deen (Oct. 13, 1841). America's attitude toward 
the situation was awaited with great interest by 
European Powers. Such an assumption could 
not be tolerated — America had already suffered 
too much from British assumption — and President 
Tyler in his message to Congress protested that 
"however desirous the United States may be for 
the suppression of the slave trade, they cannot 
consent to any interpolations of the maritime code 
at the mere will and pleasure of other governments. 
We deny the right of any such interpolation to 
any one, or all the nations of earth without our 
consent. . . . American citizens prosecuting a 
lawful commerce on the African seas, under the 
flag of their country, are not responsible for the 
abuse or unlawful use of that flag by others; nor 
can they rightfully, on account of any such alleged 
abuses, be interrupted, molested, or detained while 
in the ocean; and if thus molested and detained 
while pursuing honest voyages in the usual way 
and violating no laws themselves, they are un- 
questionably entitled to indemnity."^ 
» Right of Search, Daniel Webster, 



58 Historic Sketches of the South 

Lord Aberdeen in his correspondence with Mr. 
Stephenson (Oct. 13, 1841) had admitted that 
it would be an infringement of pubhc law, to visit 
and search American vessels during times of 
peace, if that right were not granted by treaty. 
"But no such right is asserted. We sincerely 
desire to respect the vessels of the United States, 
but we may reasonably expect to know what it is 
we respect. Doubtless the flag is prima facie 
evidence of nationality of the vessel; and, if this 
evidence were in its nature conclusive and irre- 
fragible, it ought to preclude all further inquiry. 
But it is sufficiently notorious that the flags of all 
nations are liable to be assumed by those who have 
no right or title to bear them. Mr. Stephenson 
himself fully admits the extent to which the 
American flag has been employed for the purpose 
of covering this infamous traffic. The undersigned 
joins with Mr. Stephenson in deeply lamenting 
the evil; and he agrees with him in thinking the 
United States ought not to be considered respon- 
sible for the abuse of their flag. But if all inquiry 
be resisted, even when carried no further than to 
ascertain the nationality of the vessel, and impu- 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 59 

nity be claimed for the most lawless and desperate 
of mankind, in the commission of the fraud the 
undersigned greatly fears that it may be regarded 
as something like an assumption of that re- 
sponsibility which has been deprecated by Mr. 
Stephenson. . . . 

"The undersigned, although with pain, must 
add, that if such visit lead to the proof of the 
American origin of the vessel, and that she was 
avowedly engaged in the trade, exhibiting man- 
acles, fetters, and other usual implements of 
torture, or had even a number of those unfortu- 
nates on board, no British officer could interfere 
further. He might give information to the cruisers 
of the United States, but it could not be in his 
power to arrest or impede the prosecution of the 
voyage and the success of the undertaking." 

The question called for a diplomatic correspond- 
ence. In 1842, Lord Ashburton was sent as 
special minister to the United States, empowered 
to settle the Northwest Boundary, and other ques- 
tions of controversy. The result of his conference 
with Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, was a 
treaty between Great Britain and the United 



6o Historic Sketches of the South 

States known as the Ashburton Treaty and as the 
Treaty of Washington. By the eighth article 
each stipulated to "maintain on the African coast 
an adequate squadron, to carry in all not less than 
eighty giins, to enforce separately and respectively 
the laws, rights, and obligations of the two countries 
for the suppression of the slave trade." 

There was also the realization that as long as 
certain countries offered open markets for slaves, 
the temptation to malefactors would be so great 
that their efforts would be more or less ineffectual ; 
by the ninth article both coimtries agreed to 
"unite in all becoming representations and re- 
monstrances with any and all powers within whose 
dominions such markets are allowed to exist," 
and that "they will urge upon all such powers 
the propriety and duty of closing such markets 
effectually, at once and forever." 

Americans, among others, continued to brazenly 
carry on the trade; as the gap between the North 
and the South widened, it was carried on with 
renewed vigor. The Abolitionists' thoughts were 
focused on conditions in the South, and failed to 
note the flourishing trade carried on under their 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 6i 

very eyes from the ports of New England and 
New York. Inhabitants of these places were 
constantly being found implicated, but by lack of 
proof, or through some technicality, they were 
seldom convicted. Officials, who were either con- 
niving or indifferent, aided them in their lucrative 
trade. As late as 1858, a brisk trade was carried 
on; statistics show that in that year eighty -five 
slavers were fitted out and sailed from New York 
alone, and these successfiilly captured and sold 
into slavery fifteen thousand Africans. Some- 
times they were sent into the South. The schooner 
Wanderer in the fall of 1858 surreptitiously landed 
three hundred at Brimswick, Georgia; they were 
taken up the Savannah River and sold. In 
October, of the same year, an alleged slave bark. 
Isle de Cuba, was taken in custody at Boston, and 
her crew held as witnesses under a thousand- 
dollar bond; later they and Captain Dobson were 
discharged. In November, the schooner Madison 
was taken by the United States marshal at New 
York. She was intended for the slave trade, was 
sold at auction, and bought in for Eddy & Gar- 
dener of Salem, Mass., for sixteen hundred dollars. 



62 Historic Sketches of the South 

Evidence pointed that she was bound for Salem 
to be fitted out as a slaver when captured. In 
September the Echo was captured by a revenue 
cutter and taken to Charleston as the nearest 
port; Charleston was very active in her efforts 
to restrain the trade. The Echo was commanded 
by Captain Townsend of Rhode Island — the queen 
of the slave-trading States. The Africans were 
cared for at Charleston until the Colonization 
Society could take charge of them. They were 
the wildest barbarians — men and women were 
alike nude, though this was no evidence that they 
had been accustomed to going so in their native 
land, as their clothes were usually taken from them 
by their captors. Some of the charitable ladies 
provided clothing for them. Among all these 
unfortunates there was but one article of clothing 
• — a glove — and this was worn with great pride 
and distinction by a tall, handsome negress. 
Hoop-skirts were then in vogue, and this woman 
was dressed by the ladies in full regalia. En- 
tranced, she danced and shrieked with delight, 
pushing the hoop-skirt on one side to see it stick 
out on the other. 



Illegal Traffic in Slaves 63 

Many violations might be cited. Sometimes 
ships reported deserted vessels on the high seas — 
vessels whose manacles and wooden spoons told 
a gruesome tragedy. An article in the New York 
World, in 1859, described some of the methods by 
which the slavers escaped punishment: "The slave 
trader takes care to cross the ocean without a 
national flag or purpose of any kind. The reason 
for this is that if captured, no court can condemn 
them for piracy. The vessels may be condemned 
and the negroes liberated by the captor, but the 
crew can be punished only by the nation under 
whose flag the offense was committed. No flag, 
the crew escapes." Slavers no longer left America 
with manacles, gewgaws, and fire-water, but 
carried money. Once on the African coast they 
could buy from English or other vessels the articles 
needed for trade. The bargain struck, the crew 
that made the outward voyage was usually dis- 
charged, and a new one of adventurous spirit 
procured on the African coast. 

Thirteen years after the ratification of the Ash- 
burton Treaty, when England made reclamations 
on the Brazilian Government for innumerable 



64 Historic Sketches of the South 

violations of her treaties, the reply of the Emperor 
was "if Great Britain would find the real 
culprits, she must go to the ports of Boston and 
New York to find them."^ 

' Journal de Commercio, Rio, May 26, 1856. 



CHAPTER IV 

PREPARATIONS FOR CLOTILDE's VOYAGE 

In 1858, Mobile had been for almost a century 
and a half one of the important Gulf coast ports. 
Picturesquely situated at the head of a lagoon-like 
bay, the craft of many nations dropped anchor 
in her waters. Somewhat past the heyday of 
youth, her buildings mellowed by time and her 
streets shaded by trees, she wore an air that was 
calm and comfortable, and her homes and public 
buildings bespoke a settled prosperity. Survivors 
of primitive and pioneer life might be seen about 
the streets; some Indians lingered on and with 
baskets strapped across their shoulders sold file 
and sassafras about the streets, while white- 
covered "Chickasaha" wagons, drawn by from 
six to twenty oxen, came slowly and laboriously 
down Spring Hill and St. Stephen's roads, bring- 
ing staples from the interior to the Mobile markets. 

The district near the river and towards the northern 
s 65 



66 Historic Sketches of the South 

part of the town was given over to commerce and 
occupied by cotton warehouses — low-lying, monoto- 
nous structures of brick. The river boats carried 
on a brisk trade and Mobile's export to foreign 
countries was large. Life about the wharves 
which was usually busy — and often gay — became 
very stirring during the latter part of 1858 and 
1859. It drew upon itself the attention of the 
United States Government, elicited a special 
proclamation from the President, and a vigilant 
watch by United States officials. 

In the early fifties, during one of Nicaragua's 
chronic revolutions. General Walker had been 
invited by the democrats of Leon to imite with 
them against the aristocrats of Granada. Many 
Alabamians joined him in this expedition and shed 
their blood for the cause. Walker gained supreme 
power, but his glory was short-lived. The oppos- 
ing forces united and compelled him to leave. In 
1857, President Buchanan recognized him as 
President of Nicaragua, and addressed him as such. 
His adventurous exploit met with general accla- 
mation. But when Walker announced that Nica- 
ragua would be open to Southern colonization, 



Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 67 

admitting slaves, it was like flaunting a red rag 
before a maddened populace; the abolitionism of 
the North, already unrestrained in its fanaticism 
and jealous hatred, backed by Northern commer- 
cialism caused a rapid reversion of feeling. Walker, 
the erstwhile hero, was denoimced as a filibuster, 
and Southerners were accused of attempting to 
establish a Southern Republic along the Gulf of 
Mexico that they might spread slavery and reopen 
the slave traffic. 

In 1858, Walker prepared to make good his 
previous claims. The collectors of the ports of 
New Orleans and Mobile were ordered not to 
clear vessels for Nicaraguan ports, before first 
commimicating with the Government of Washing- 
ton. Vessels carrying passengers and receiving 
every protection of the Government still sailed 
from Eastern ports to San Juan del Norte. Mobile 
and New Orleans felt the trade of the South to 
be seriously crippled by this discrimination. In a 
special message, the President denounced the 
"leaders of former illegal expeditions who had 
expressed their intention of open hostilities against 
Nicaragua," and particularly against one "who is 



68 Historic Sketches of the South 

now at Mobile, which has been designated as the 
rendezvous and place of departure for San Juan 
del Norte." He enjoined all the Government offi- 
cers, "civil and military, to be active, vigilant, and 
faithful in suppressing these illegal enterprises." 
This message was received with indignation 
throughout the whole of the lower South. Mobil- 
ians gathered in groups about the streets and on 
the new post-office steps, and excitedly discussed 
the President's proclamation. They were in 
sympathy with Walker and many were contri- 
buting funds towards the expedition. Espousal 
of his cause became an issue in the mayoral 
election. Further excitement was generated by 
the attitude of Judge Campbell, his charge to the 
grand jury, and his emphasis of the President's 
order for officials to be "vigilant, active, and faith- 
ful." Citizens regarded this as espionage and 
as a personal affront to their fellow townsman, 
Robert H. Smith, collector of the port. The dis- 
covery of a Government spy — one General Wilson 
from Ohio — and a minion of Judge Campbell — 
who was seen "sneaking about the wharves and 
warehouses of the city, to find something contra- 



Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 69 

band of Abolition interest and Abolition policy," 
provoked the citizens to further anger. "As a 
next step we shall have our servants paid to report 
the words which drop from us at the table"* 
Rebellion was already rampant in the South. 
The temperament of Southern men was imfailingly 
daring — adventure appealed to their imaginations 
and risk was a game to be played. In the midst 
of this excitement, an expedition was preparing, 
money was being contributed, and the schooner 
Susan fitted out. Harry Maury, socially and 
financially prominent, was in command. When 
ready to sail she was refused clearing papers, but 
Maury weighed anchor and sailed down the bay, 
preparatory to joining the fleet. The revenue 
cutter McClelland pursued, brought her to, and 
boarded her and demanded her papers. Maury 
said he did not expect to receive them until he 
reached the fleet. The captain of the McClelland 
then claimed the Susan as a prize for the Govern- 
ment; Maury refused to consider her as such. 
Lieutenant White was placed aboard with orders 
to take her to Dog River Bar and to hold her there 

* Mobile Register, December, 1858. 



70 Historic Sketches of the South 

as prize. Maury nonchalantly replied that he did 
not object to White remaining aboard as his guest. 
The next day both vessels sailed about the bay, 
but the captain, under orders from the custom- 
house at Mobile, warned Maury that if he at- 
tempted to sail away the Susan would be sunk. 
At dark the captain ordered both boats to drop 
anchor for the night. About eleven o'clock, a 
heavy mist arose, the Susan weighed anchor and 
slipped noiselessly away, carrying aboard Lieu- 
tenant White. The Mobile Register, voicing the 
sentiments of the citizens, wished for the voyage 
"that the breezes be prosperous and the fates 
propitious." When two hundred miles out in the 
Gulf, Lieutenant White was transferred to the 
bark Oregon and sent back to New Orleans, where 
he stated that he had received every courtesy 
while aboard the Susan. He reported that she 
carried besides her crew, two hundred and forty 
men, Minie balls, and Mississippi rifles. The 
Susan was wrecked on a coral reef off Honduras. 
The subsequent adventiires of her men is a thrilling 
narrative. They were received by the governor 
of Bay Island, who upon hearing of their predica- 



Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 71 

ment sent them back to Mobile in Her Majesty's 
steam-sloop Basilisk. 

With the birth and fruition of such adventures, 
Mobile's river-front naturally became an exciting 
place. About this time a group of men were one 
day standing on the wharf discussing the efforts 
the Government was finally making to suppress 
the slave trade, the vigilance which was being ex- 
erted, and the impossibility for a vessel equipped 
for such a purpose to evade officials. There was 
some betting — a favorite pastime of the day — 
and Captain Tim Meaher, a steamboat builder 
and river-man, who was standing near, wagered 
that he could send a slaver to the coast of Africa 
and bring through the port of Mobile a cargo of 
slaves. The wager was taken up and the stakes 
were large. This is the tradition which is given 
in connection with the Clotilde's voyage. It may 
have been true or it may have been invented to give 
color and palliation to what proved to be the last 
cargo of slaves brought into the United States, 
but it is certain that this was only one of the 
voyages made under the auspices of the Meahers 
and Captain Foster. Of these there are still 



72 Historic Sketches of the South 

rumors among the older people, and the widow 
of Captain Foster, innocent and trustful, hoped 
until her recent death to get from the United 
States about thirty thousand dollars which would 
have been Foster's share in the Gipsy — a slaver 
which with her cargo was captured by Govern- 
ment officials and which was valued by those 
interested in her at four hundred thousand dollars. 
There were three of the Meaher brothers — Tim, 
Jim, and Burns. They were natives of Maine, 
and possessed the New England love of the water 
and taste for the slave trade. Captain Foster 
was born in Nova Scotia of English parentage. 
His people were all seafaring — sailors, captains, 
and builders of boats — and possibly his proclivities 
were also inherited. These men were interested 
in a mill and a ship-yard at the mouth of Chickasa- 
bogue, three miles above Mobile. The Clotilde, 
the Susan, the Gipsy, and other boats which were 
engaged in the river trade, in filibustering expedi- 
tions, the slave trade, and as blockade-runners 
during the Civil War were built there. The 
Clotilde, because of her fleetness, was selected to 
make the voyage to the slave coast. She was 




Drawn by Emma Rricht 



Poleete. 



Preparations for Clotilde's Voyage 73 

the personal property of Foster and had been 
designed and built by him. 

Once arriving on the African coast there was 
little trouble in procuring a cargo of slaves, for it 
had long been a part of the traders' policy to 
instigate the tribes against each other and in this 
manner keep the markets stocked. News of the 
trade was often published in the papers. The 
Meahers and Foster could have sought nothing 
more enlightening or to their purpose than an 
item published in the Mobile Register, November 
9, 1858: "From the west coast of Africa we have 
advice dated September 21st. The quarreling of 
the tribes on Sierra Leone River rendered the 
aspect of things very unsatisfactory. The King 
of Dahomey was driving a brisk trade in slaves 
at from fifty to sixty dollars apiece at Whydah. 
Immense numbers of negroes were collected along 
the coast for export." Foster, with a crew of 
northern men, sailed directly for Whydah. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CAPTURE OF THE TARKARS 

The slaves who constituted the Clotilde's cargo 
and who have become historic by being the last 
brought into the United States were captured by 
Dahomey's warriors and Amazons on one of their 
cruel excursions. For many years the tribe of 
Dahomey had been a scourge to the weaker and 
more peaceable tribes whose domains lay near the 
Gold Coast or in the interior away from the coast 
of Guinea. Cruel, stealthy war was their occupa- 
tion — a war of surprise which aroused sleeping 
villages to the horrors of fire, plunder, and capture. 
The older victims were usually killed. Sometimes 
they were permitted to live and to see their young 
and strong overpowered, bound, and led into 
captivity, — a captivity from which there could be 
no hope of return, for the prisoners were conveyed 
to the coast, sold to the slavers, and carried across 

the sea to strange, alien lands. The King of 

74 



The Capture of the Tarkars 75 

Dahomey's house was built of skulls and his 
drinking cups were the skulls of fallen chiefs. In 
the early part of the nineteenth century one of 
the Dahomey kings organized a battalion of 
women warriors — a race rare in history but not 
especially unique in African annals. Eariy cos- 
mographies record of the King of Inhamban : " It is 
affirmed that he hath a strong battalion of Ama- 
zons, a warlike race of women who inhabit about 
the Lake of Zambre, and the outskirts of Zanzibar ; 
compared by some for their fidelity and prowess to 
the Turkish Janizaries"^ Like the Greek Ama- 
zons those of Inhamban and Dahomey were re- 
cruited by incursions upon neighboring tribes. 

The Tarkar village was situated many miles 
inland. Poleete, one of the old survivors, says it 
was "many days from the water," meaning 
thereby the sea. They were a peace-loving, 
agricultural people, raising hogs, sheep, and cows, 
and planting corn, beans, and yams. Their chief 
industry was the production of palm oil. Nature 
had been lavish — the lands were wonderfully 
fertile, requiring little work and no fertilizer; the 

' Heylyn's Cosmographie, 1657. 



76 Historic Sketches of the South 

fragrance of ripening fruits filled the forests. The 
Tarkar dwellings were of superior quality and had 
the advantage of withstanding fire. They were 
built of mud ; the process of construction has been 
described by two of the survivors — Poleete and 
Kazoola. First a circular trench was dug and a 
wall of mud four feet high and a foot and a half 
thick laid; this was left until thoroughly dry. 
Another four feet was laid upon this, which was 
also left to dry. Then a third layer of four feet 
was laid making their dwellings about twelve feet 
high. When thoroughly dry, branches were cut, 
the roof thatched and covered with mud. 

The Tarkars were not without laws, and had a 
sort of court of justice over which the King pre- 
sided. Each of the old survivors lays especial 
stress upon honesty as a tribal characteristic. 
Stealing was almost unknown ; all worked and had 
what was needed; houses were never locked and 
possessions seldom disturbed. All an individual's 
wealth "might be hung upon a tree or accidentally 
left — others of the tribe knew they had not put it 
there — that it was not theirs — so disturbed it not." 
" Suppose I had left my purse in town in the public 



The Capture of the Tarkars ^'j 

square. To-day I have not the time to go for it — 
nor to-morrow — am I worried? No, for I know 
when I go I will find it where I left it. Could you 
do that in America?" (Kazoola). As there was 
no reason or excuse for stealing, when one among 
them committed a theft, it was more through a 
spirit of braggadocio. The culprit would be 
taken before the King who would say, "You are 
strong — you have two arms to work — you suffer 
for nothing — why have you stolen?" The de- 
fendant would be imprisoned, and the Tarkars say 
that if he lived to get out he would steal no more. 
Death was always meted to the murderer — rank 
having no weight with justice. Poleete explained 
that if the King's son committed miu"der, death 
would fall to him as to the commoner. "Money 
don't plea you there" (Poleete). The manner of 
execution was decapitation — the implement a 
sword. To illustrate the inexorable nature of 
their laws, the following was narrated by Kazoola : 
" The Law in Tarkar. If it would be my son. He 
kills a man. I have money — I want to buy my 
son. I go before the King, and say ' Oh, King, my 
son has killed, but I have money.' The King 



78 Historic Sketches of the South 

would reply, ' Here is the Law, read. ' I read and 
say, 'Yes, King, the Law says Death.' And the 
King would answer, 'That is the Law, and I am 
the King. Shut your eyes, give up your son — 
money cannot buy.' " 

The Tarkars were polygamists, sometimes hav- 
ing as many as three wives, but never any more. 
The conditions of life were so easy they could 
afford the luxury. There was no need to support 
the wives, for the women had the same amount of 
property as the men and did the same work. 
Jealousy among the wives was unknown; the first 
wife selected the second and the second the third, 
etc. This custom has been lucidly explained by 
Kazoola and Olouala. * ' Kazoola has been married 
about three years. His wife says, 'Kazoola, I am 
growing old — I am tired — I will bring you another 
wife.' Before speaking thus, she has already one 
in mind — some maid who attracts her and who 
Kazoola has possibly never seen. The wife goes 
out and finds the maid — possibly in the market- 
place — and asks, 'You know Kazoola?' The 
maid answers, 'I have heard of him.' The wife 
then says, ' Kazoola is good — he is kind — I would 




Abache and Kazoola. 



The Capture of the Tarkars 79 

like you to be his wife, ' The maid answers, ' Come 
with me to my parents.' They go together; 
questions are exchanged and if these are satis- 
factory, the parents say, ' We give our girl into your 
keeping — she is ours no more — be good to her.'" 
The wife and the maid return together to Kazoola's 
house. The wife introduces the maid to Kazoola, 
shows her how to look after things as she has done, 
then sits down to take her days of rest and works 
no more. The relation of the husband to the 
wives was that of protector. Once married, a 
man dared not look upon women other than his 
wives, for the punishment was very great. To 
justify their native custom of polygamy, the 
Christianized Tarkars now cite the example of 
David and Solomon. 

They believed in the spirits of departed relatives ; 
to these the "day was as night and the night as 
the day." To these spirits their actions were 
known. The Tarkars also possessed dualistic 
ideas of a future life. There was a Spirit of Good — 
Ahla-ahra, to whom by doing right their actual, 
daily life would be something of a consecration; 
and there was a Spirit of Evil — Ahla-bady-oleelay. 



8o Historic Sketches of the South 

"Do right and you will go to Ahla-ahra; do 
wrong, you go to Ahla-bady-oleelay." While not 
exactly Nature-worshipers, they were Nature- 
fearers; they did not propitiate by prayer or any 
kind of ceremonial these Spirits of Good and Evil, 
but believed their powers were manifested in the 
wind, the cloud that covered the sun, and in the 
thunder and the lightning. Before these last 
the Tarkars trembled, and were filled with 
fear; they would cross their arms over their 
breasts and cowering, cry out, "We will be 
good!" 

"In Africa different places, like Mobile, Mont- 
gomery, New Orleans — each have a different tribe 
speaking a different language. Suppose the tribe 
at New Orleans comes to the one at Mobile and 
says, 'You have fruit and corn and cattle — you 
must give me half.' You at Mobile say, 'No, 
go back and raise your own cattle and corn.' 
And they say, 'If you do not give us cattle and 
com, we will make war on you.' They go back 
to their own country and talk among themselves. 
'You know that tribe at Mobile. We demanded 
half their crops and cattle — they refused; we will 



The Capture of the Tarkars 8i 

make war upon them. But they have strong sol- 
diers. We will go through the country, surround 
the village at the break of day. ' " ^ Thus did the 
Dahomeyans plan their attack upon the Tarkars. 
One morning just at the break of day, the fiends of 
Dahomey — and the female warriors were the most 
cruel — broke upon the unsuspecting Tarkars. 
Some of the men were already astir and had gone 
into the fields to work while the day was yet cool. 
These were all killed; had one escaped he would 
have aroused the sleeping village, and the women 
and small children might have made their escape. 
They were aroused from slumber and in a few 
minutes death or captivity was upon them; even 
the infants were torn from their mothers' breasts 
and carried away. Those who were not killed 
were overpowered. Dahomey's Amazons van- 
quished the most stalwart men and boimd them 
as captives. The Tarkars relate that in their 
paint and war clothes Dahomey's women soldiers 
could not be distinguished from the men. The 
Dahomeyans cut off the heads of their dead victims, 
leaving the bodies where they had fallen. The 
' Narrative of Kazoola. 



82 Historic Sketches of the South 

heads were to be taken home as evidence of in- 
dividual valor and as trophies to be hung on the 
Dahomey huts. Human faces could express no 
more anguish than those of the old Tarkars when 
they speak of this awful experience. One of the 
trials and tragedies of their march to the coast was 
the dangling heads of their relatives and friends. 
When these grew offensive the Dahomeyans 
stopped the march that they might smoke the 
heads. As they passed near one of Dahomey's vil- 
lages, at a curve in the big road, they caught sight of 
fresh heads raised on poles above the huts and of 
skulls, grinning white. With the captives there 
were some people of other tribes — friends who had 
been visiting in the Tarkar village — Tarkbar, 
Goombardi, Filanee, and Ejasha. (These tribal 
names are spelled as pronoimced by the surviving 
Tarkars.) Kazoola has drawn a map of the route 
taken by Dahomey and of the march to the sea, 
which he claims any of his tribe would recognize. 
The towns they passed through on their march 
to the sea were Eko, Budigree (Badragy?), Adache, 
and Whydah. This last the Tarkars sometimes 
call Grefe. There they remember a white house 



The Capture of the Tarkars 83 

on the river-bank; behind this was a stockade 
wherein they were held prisoners about three 
weeks, at the end of which time Captain Foster 
came. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE VOYAGE 



Captain Foster boarded at the Vanderslice 
home (afterwards marrying one of the daughters) 
in the Meaher settlement. This was about three 
miles from Mobile and a mile from the ship-yard 
at the mouth of Chickasabogue. When starting 
for Africa, he left home by night, slung his bag 
of gold across his shoulder, and went alone through 
the woods to the river where the Clo tilde lay. He 
pulled out a part of the cabin bulk-head and con- 
cealed his gold behind it. He then picked up his 
crew, got under way, and passed out of the Gulf of 
Mexico without incident or mishap. When on 
the Atlantic he was alarmed to find by the stars 
that the Clotilde was drifting out of her course. 
He knew no cause, and she continued to drift. 
One night he lay on his bunk, sleepless and wonder- 
ing. Like an inspiration the thought came that 

the hidden gold was too near the compass. He 

84 



The Voyage 85 

arose, moved the gold, and the needle swiing into 
position. A terrific hurricane blew him to the 
Cape Verde Islands, where he had to stop for 
repairs. The crew mutinied. They threatened 
that if he did not promise more pay, they would 
inform the officials of the purpose of his voyage. 
Foster did not hesitate to comply, for promises 
cost nothing and he sometimes foimd it imneces- 
sary to keep them. His wife in relating this inci- 
dent remarked that the captain had always said 
that "promises were like pie-crust — made to be 
broken." He made friends with the Portuguese 
officials and the United States Consul, and as a 
part of his policy presented handsome shawls and 
ornaments to their wives. These had been bought 
in Mobile and stowed away to be used in such 
emergencies. No questions were asked Foster. 
The repairs finished, he sailed away. He arrived 
safely in the Gulf of Guinea and had to anchor 
more than a mile out and be taken ashore in a 
small boat which was built to cut through the 
surf. When about to pass through a breaker, a 
warning would be given to Foster to hold his nose. 
On reaching shore he was placed in a hammock 



86 Historic Sketches of the South 

and conveyed by six stalwart blacks to the 
presence of a prince of Dahomey — a great, stout 
black, weighing over three hundred pounds. 
This prince was hospitable in his attentions and 
entertained Foster with the sights of Whydah. 
One which he did not relish was a large square 
enclosure in which were thousands of snakes. 
Walking among these creatures was both trying 
and disgusting. They were kept for religious 
ceremonials. 

This prince wished to make a present to Foster, 
so asked him to select for himself a native — one 
that the "superior wisdom and exalted taste" 
of Foster designated the finest specimen. Gumpa 
was his choice, Foster making this selection with 
the intention of flattering the prince to whom 
Gumpa was nearly related. This accounts for 
the presence of one of Dahomey's tribe in the 
African settlement near Mobile. He became 
known as African Peter and was a conspicuous 
figure in the life of the settlement. He used to 
tell his story in the simple phrase, "My people 
sold me and your people bought me." 

After many hospitalities, Foster was taken to 



The Voyage ^y 

the stockade where the Tarkars were imprisoned. 
They were placed in circles composed of ten men 
or ten women, Foster standing in the middle. 
This was another trial for the unfortunates, and 
Kazoola says, in language which any one could 
understand , ' ' He looka , an ' looka , an ' looka . Then 
he point to one." The one indicated would be 
taken out of the circle and placed to one side ; then 
Foster would point to another, who would be 
placed with the one already selected. Foster 
picked out one hundred and thirty, after which 
he got into the hammock and was conveyed across 
the river to the beach. Behind him marched the 
Tarkars, chained one behind the other. They 
had to wade, the water coming up to their necks. 
On the beach they had their first view of the sea, 
and the realization that they had to go out into 
it was another horror. They wore clothes made 
of cotton — the same they ha,d worn when captured 
— but as they stepped into the small boats which 
were to take them to the Clotilde, the Dahomeyans, 
always vicious and avaricious, tore their garments 
from them, saying "You go where you can get 
plenty of clothes." Men and women alike were 



88 Historic Sketches of the South 

left entirely nude, and this fact is still a humilia- 
tion to the Tarkars. They regard the accusations 
of some American negroes that they were a naked 
people as a great indignity. 

As the Tarkars were taken aboard the Clotilde, 
they were put into the hole. In this respect the 
Clotilde was better equipped than most slavers; 
the usual space in which the "middle passage" 
was made was from two and a half to three feet 
in height, and the miserable captives were stowed 
away much as sardines are packed in cans, without 
even room to sit up. The hole of the Clotilde was 
deep enough to permit of the men of lesser stature 
to stand erect. The top of the hole was shut 
down and the Tarkars were left in darkness to 
grieve and wonder. 

When a hundred and sixteen had been brought 
aboard, Foster went up into the rigging with his 
glasses to look about the harbor. He saw that 
all of Dahomey's vessels were flying black flags. 
He hurried down and gave orders to leave all 
slaves who were not yet aboard; to weigh anchor 
and to get immediately under way. The treacher- 
ous Dahomey ans dealt also in piracy, and were 




Map Drawn by Kazoola. 

(7) Tarkar Village. (2) Dahomey's Land, (j) Wavering line 

showing stealthy march of Dahomeyans through forest. 

{4) Route by which captive Tarkars were taken to 

the sea. (5), (<5), (7), {8), Eko, Budigree, 

Adache, Whydah, towns through which 

Tarkars passed. (9) River. (lo) 

Beach and sea. 



The Voyage 89 

making ready to bear down upon the CloHlde, 
recapture the slaves, and take Foster and the crew 
prisoners. The Clotilde made her escape. When 
out some miles, the Clotilde was sighted by an 
English cruiser. The slaver was a small craft, 
and Foster by using a favorite tactic — an elusive 
tacking — evaded the English. Once in the wake 
of the trade-winds the Clotilde sailed towards 
her destination at a lively speed. 

At the end of the thirteenth day the Africans 
were removed from their close, dark quarters. 
Their limbs were so cramped and numbed they 
refused to obey their wills, so they were supported 
by some of the crew and walked around the deck 
until the use of their limbs returned. Tottering 
on deck, to their astonished, terror-stricken eyes 
the sea stretched all around them: "We looka, an* 
looka, an' looka — nothin' but sky and water. 
Whar we com' from, we do not know — whar we 
go, we do not know" (Kazoola). One day they 
saw islands. The Tarkars say that on the twen- 
tieth day, Foster seemed uneasy; that he always 
had his glasses to his eyes; that he climbed the 
mast, and looked for a long time; then he came 



90 Historic Sketches of the South 

hurriedly down, ordered the sails down, threw out 
the anchors, and ordered the Tarkars back into 
the hole. Thus the Clotilde lay until night. 

The Tarkars were naturally close observers; 
during the voyage they seem to have been parti- 
cularly alert. They noted the varying colors of 
the sea — how at first it was blue, then green and 
how they passed through water that seemed 
blood-red. Foster was kind to them. They 
could eat the food — hunger makes anything 
palatable. Though their mental anguish was 
great, they suffered physically only for water. 
About a gill was given them at morning and at 
evening, and this tasted of vinegar. During 
such voyages, it was necessary that the water be 
conserved. Their only relief came when they 
caught rain in their parched hands and mouths. 

When the Clotilde sailed into American waters, 
the Africans were put into the hole — there to 
remain until relief came in capture or a successful 
landing. Three days before they landed, when 
the Clotilde lay waiting behind the islands in 
Mississippi Sound and near the lower end of 
Mobile Bay, a bimch of green boughs was brought 



The Voyage 91 

to them to show that the voyage was almost at an 

end. 

To make the hiding more secure, the Clotilde 
was dismasted. Then Foster got into a small 
boat, rowed by four sailors to go to the western 
shore of Mobile Bay, intending to send word to 
Meaher that the Clotilde had arrived. His ap- 
proach was regarded with suspicion by some men 
ashore, and he was fired upon. Waving a white 
handkerchief their doubts were allayed and he 
offered fifty dollars for a conveyance which would 
take him to Mobile. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE RETURN 

The time of waiting had been an anxious one. 

The Meahers reahzed the risk. There had always 

been some, but during the absence of the Clotilde 

great agitation had become rife throughout the 

country, and one of the things the Government 

had at last undertaken to do was to wipe out at 

once and forever the illegal traffic in slaves. The 

destination and purpose of the Clotilde had been 

noised about, and Meaher realized that officials 

were watching his movements. Aside from the 

Clotilde's capture, he had little to fear, for every 

vestige of the conservatism which had so long 

held in restraint the abolitionism of the North 

and the temper of the South had disappeared ; the 

two sections had drifted so far apart as to be 

virtually two countries; war clouds were looming 

large upon the horizon and differences had gone so 

far there could be no reconciliation. Garrison's 

92 



The Return 93 

voice was ringing through the North characterizing 
Southerners as " thieves and robbers, men-stealers, 
and women-whippers " and calling loudly, "how 
can two walk together, except they agree? The 
slaveholder with his hands dripping in blood — 
will I make a compact with him? The man who 
plunders cradles — will I say to him 'Brother, let 
us walk together in unity?' The man who to 
gratify his lust or his anger, scourges women with 
the lash till the soil is red with blood — will I say 
to him, ' Give me your hand ; let us form a glorious 
union?' " Charges which were as a scourge to 
Southerners; goaded and angered, many began to 
talk of reopening the slave traffic. The question 
was agitated in Congress — a number of papers 
advocating it, not all of which were of the South. 
The New York Day Book, May 17, 1859, came out 
strongly for it. "Of course no one can suppose 
we doubt the right of bringing negroes from Africa 
if they are needed. It is simply a question of 
expediency, and there can be no doubt our laws 
making it piracy must be blotted out of the Statute 
Books. They are not only ridiculous, but utterly 
and wholly contemptible," etc. From the point 



94 Historic Sketches of the South 

of view of a large class of Southerners these argu- 
ments were not fallacious. Yet they were retro- 
gressive and their revival put the South out of 
harmony with ethical and intellectual progress, 
and defeated the hopes of those of larger vision. 
Early in 1859 the Mobile papers lent their support 
to the question. Mobilians, like all of the South, 
were tried to their utmost, and Meaher knew if 
all due secrecy was observed, he had little to fear 
from them. 

Captain Foster reached Mobile on a Sunday 
morning in August (1859) with the secret that the 
Clotilde lay behind the islands in Mississippi Sound. 
Arrangements had long been made that a tug 
should lie in readiness to go at a moment's notice 
down Mobile Bay to tow the Clotilde and her 
cargo to safety. When the news came, the tug's 
pilot was attending service at St. John's Church. 
Captain Jim Meaher and James Dennison — a 
negro slave — hurried to the church. Dennison 
remained outside while Meaher went in to call 
the pilot. The three hastened down to the wharf, 
and were soon aboard the tug Billy Jones, steaming 
rapidly down the bay. Late afternoon found 



The Return 95 

them nearing the Clotilde, but they waited for 
the darkness. The most dangerous part of the 
adventure was still ahead — the trip up Mobile 
Bay. At the mouth the marshes and islands offered 
protection; if they could once reach the delta of 
the Mobile River, with its desolate stretches of 
marsh, its deep rivers and intricate bayous, safety 
was almost assured. But the bay lay smilingly 
open between two long arms of land. Her won- 
derful beauty under the gorgeous August sunset 
was lost upon the watchers ; they prayed for the 
light to fade and for mysterious night with its 
enshrouding darkness. At last as if loath to die, 
the color was gone; sea and sky melted together 
into almost impenetrable grayness. They ceased 
their vigils and fell to a quick activity; lines were 
thrown, the Clotilde made fast, and the trip up the 
bay was begun . Her wooded shores had echoed the 
voices of many peoples and the sounds from many 
craft, but never any more epoch-making — those 
from the last slave ship — the voyage nearing its 
finish which ended forever among Anglo-Saxon 
people the darkest blot upon their civilization. 
The chugging sound of the tug's machinery filled 



96 Historic Sketches of the South 

the Tarkars with terrified wonder; at last they 
concluded that it was the swarming of bees. 

Time was precious and the darkness doubly 
so ; much was still to be done before day with its 
light should come. These hours might mean life 
or death. The trip up the bay was safely made. 
The tug avoided the Mobile River channel, 
slipped behind the light-house on Battery Gladden, 
into Spanish River. This lay in the midst of the 
marsh and with its circuitous windings was not 
more than ten miles long. As the Clotilde passed 
opposite Mobile the clock in the old Spanish tower 
struck eleven, and the watchman's voice floated 
over the city and across the marshes, "Eleven 
o'clock and all 's well." 

The Clotilde was taken directly to Twelve-Mile 
Island — a lonely, weird place by night. There 
the R. B. Tainey^ waited; lights were smothered, 
and in the darkness quickly and quietly the 

' The R. B. Tainey was owned by the Meahers, and is described 
in advertisements of that time as a "new, elegant, and light-weight 
summer packet; Captain Jim Meaher. Side- wheeler, drawing 
eight inches of water with elegant and spacious staterooms and 
large well-ventilated cabins, carrying one hundred and fifty 
passengers." She had been named for Chief Justice Tainey 
who had handed down the famous Dred Scott decision. 




Drawn by Emma Roche. 



Kazoola. 



The Return 97 

Clotilde^s cargo of one hundred and sixteen negroes 
was transferred to the steamboat, taken up the 
Alabama River to John Dabney's plantation 
below Mount Vernon and not far from the shadow 
of the fort, where they were landed before noon 
of the next day. 

At Twelve-Mile Island the crew of Northern 
sailors again mutinied. Captain Foster, with a 
six shooter in each hand, went among them, dis- 
charged them, and ordered them to "hit the grit 
and never be seen in Southern waters again." 
They were placed aboard the tug. Meaher 
bought tickets and saw that they boarded a train 
for the North. The Clotilde was scuttled and 
fired, Captain Foster himself placed seven cords 
of light wood upon her. Her hull still lies in the 
marsh at the mouth of Bayou Corne and may be 
seen at low tide. Foster afterwards regretted her 
destruction as she was worth more than the ten 
Africans given him by the Meahers as his booty. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TARKARS AT DABNEY's PLANTATION 

Dabney's plantation lay in the cane brake 
country — a part of the river region, so-called from 
the miles of towering cane. It was a wilderness, 
every part strangely alike, in which even those 
most familiar with it could be easily lost. Here, 
according to the narrative of James Dennison, 
the slave who was left in charge and who afterwards 
married Kanko — one of their number — and of the 
surviving Tarkars, they were kept for eleven days, 
but in a state of constant change, being trans- 
ferred each day from one part of the swamp to 
another. They were allowed to speak only in 
whispers, for there was a chance that some one 
passing on the river might hear strange voices. 
At the end of the eleventh day clothes were brought 
to them and they were put aboard the steamer 

Commodore and carried to The Bend in Clark 

98 



The Tarkars at Dabney's Plantation 99 

County, where the Alabama and Tombigbee 
rivers meet and where Burns Meaher had a plan- 
tation. 

There they were lodged each night under a wagon 
shed, and driven each morning before daybreak 
back into the swamp, where they remained until 
dark. Understanding no word and knowing not 
what was expected of them, they were made to 
know the driver's wishes by a shooing sound — 
such as would drive chickens or geese. In 
this strange land, among strange faces and an 
unknown tongue, the Tarkars say that at first 
they almost grieved themselves to death. 

Meaher sent word secretly to those disposed 
to buy. They were piloted to the place of con- 
cealment by Jim Dennison. The Africans were 
placed in two long rows, the women on one side 
and the men on the other — the buyers standing 
between, and carefully examining them — even 
looking at their teeth. Those selected would be 
put to one side, and when the purchaser was ready 
to depart, he would make his ownership known to 
them by waving his hand aroimd the group selected, 
then bringing it to his breast. The Tarkars could 



100 Historic Sketches of the South 

not understand these transactions — they only knew 
their numbers were gradually growing less. Day 
after day they saw some of their kinsmen or 
comrades led away — to what fate they knew not. 
Some were sold and taken to Selma, Of their 
march through the woods one pathetic and pic- 
turesque incident has come to me. As they 
marched through the strange land — tired, de- 
jected, friendless — knowing not where they were 
going or what would be their destiny — a circus, 
moving from place to place, chanced to pass along 
the country road. To avoid danger or suspicion, 
the Africans v/ere concealed behind the bushes 
with their backs to the passing show. As it 
passed, one of the elephants trumpeted; joy 
transformed the Tarkars, spread over their fea- 
tures, and ran through their limbs. To them the 
sound was as a cry from home, and as with one 
voice, gesticulating, tears streaming from their 
eyes, they shouted: "Ele, Ele! Argenacou, Ar- 
genacou ! " ("Home, Home ! Elephant, Elephant !") 
Of this small band — two still live — a man and wife 
— and those of the tribe near Mobile still receive 
news of them now and then. 



The Tarkars at Dabney's Plantation loi 

As time passed and the Tarkars continued 
inconsolable, Captain Tim Meaher recommended 
that they be put to some kind of work. They 
look back upon this as the first happy episode of 
their life in the new land. When they were taken 
into the fields for the first time, their astonishment 
was very great when they saw civilization's agri- 
cultural methods. "We astonish to see the mule 
behind the plow to pull" (Kazoola). The con- 
trast in fertility made them feel that the American 
soil was accursed and their own blessed. There 
they had but to scratch the top soil and whatever 
they planted grew; but in America there was 
nothing but "work, work, work." The Tarkar 
would stand for no mistreatment. Once an over- 
seer attempted something which the women con- 
sidered as such and he was overpowered by them 
and given a sound thrashing. Naturally of agri- 
cultural and industrious habits they soon came 
to understand Southern crops and were very 
successful in raising corn, cotton, beans, peas, cane, 
pumpkins, etc. This experience was of great 
advantage to them when they were afterwards 
thrown upon their own resources. Their homes 



102 Historic Sketches of the South 

to-day are characterized by excellent gardens and 
many varieties of fruit trees. 

After war was declared there was little danger 
of exposure, and the Africans belonging to Foster, 
to Jim and Tim Meaher were taken to the Meaher 
settlement, at what is known to-day as Magazine 
Point, where they were kindly treated by their 
respective owners. Those left at Burns Meaher's 
plantation tell of great hardship. When they 
first arrived they were given one pair of shoes and 
never any more. Before daybreak they were 
sent to the fields to work and kept hard at it until 
night, when they returned home by torchlight. 
After the surrender, these joined the others of 
their tribe at Magazine Point. 









Wreck of the "Clotilde. 



CHAPTER IX 

TARKAR LIFE IN AMERICA 

Magazine Point — the site of Meaher's mill 
and ship-yard — though but three miles from 
Mobile, was inaccessible, except by water or a 
circuitous route of some miles by land. Between 
the two places lay an impenetrable swamp and 
forest. Red clay hills rolled away from the north- 
ern border of this jungle, diversifying the strip of 
country between Three Mile Creek and Chickasa- 
bogue. This extensive area was known as Meaher's 
hummock and was thickly wooded by a suburb 
forest of native trees — pine, cypress, bays, magno- 
lias, beech, junipers, gums, and oaks. These had 
sheltered the goings and comings of many peoples. 
This place had been beloved by the Indians ; some 
still lingered on among what the Tarkars called the 
"high trees," living in their pine-bark tepees. 
During the Spanish regime it had been included in 

the grant of land known as the St. Louis tract, 

103 



I04 Historic Sketches of the South 

and Dr. Charles Mohr points out in his Plant Life 
in Alabama that it must have been a feeding place 
for migratory birds, for tropical plants are found 
there which are not known to other parts of the 
coast. Near the mouth of Chickasabogue, over- 
looking the river, there is a prehistoric shell-mound, 
overgrown by patriarchal live-oaks, himdreds of 
years old, and on this the Tarkars had their first 
dwellings. Much has been told and written by 
casual visitors of the queer rites and superstitions 
of "Africa-Town" — the little cluster of huts 
which have long since been abandoned — none of 
which is substantiated by fact or by the actual 
knowledge of those who have known and appreci- 
ated the Tarkars. But nothing has been told of 
the other superstitions with which this region 
fairly reeks. 

Until the saw-mills became so active there were 
old beeches near Chickasabogue and Hog Baj^ou, 
bearing seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nine- 
teenth century dates and curious signs which 
substantiated the belief of the credulous and im- 
aginative that through this district there was much 
hidden treasure — treasure buried by early adven- 



Tarkar Life in America 105 

turers, by the pirates, and in later times by mem- 
bers of the Copeland gang — and safely guarded by 
the spirits of those who had concealed it. Though 
this tract is now largely cleared and settled, these 
traditions and ghost stories are still told and 
believed by the negroes, Creoles, and ignorant 
whites, Poinquinette, an old Creole fisherman and 
a repository of interesting lore, has related some 
of his personal encounters with the Magazine 
Point ghosts, and so real are they to him, and 
so vivid his narrative, that his listeners are thrilled 
with a sort of belief. By a dream it was once made 
known to him and several companions (Nelson, 
Sales, Moody, Ebernezar Fisher, and a man named 
Robinson) that there was a treasure buried just 
below Turner & Oats' s mill. The spot was 
thickly wooded — high trees and low shrubs — yet 
not so dense that they could not see about them — 
even a bird was visible as it flew through the brush. 
They went early one Friday morning and began 
digging at seven o'clock. Almost as soon as their 
spades touched the earth, the woods began to re- 
sound with voices — child voices — and they won- 
dered where children's voices could come from, 



io6 Historic Sketches of the South 

but went on with their digging. As the excavation 
progressed, the sounds came nearer — there were 
calling and crying and hissing — until finally the 
voices were right at them and surrounding them. 
They could hear the voices but could see nothing. 
Then the voices passed by them with a whirr 
and back again into the bushes where they 
were still heard. By this time the hole was 
some ten feet deep. Nelson Sales, who had 
had more experience with spirits than the others, 
offered to go back into the woods and talk to 
the voices. He was confronted by a fearful 
apparition — a great blue bull with eyes of fire 
and a tail as large as a hogshead. It dashed 
passed him, charged across the hole, and as it 
went over threw all the earth back, completely 
filling the excavation. They were all thoroughly 
frightened and would not go back until they could 
get the negress Clara Randall, from Charleston. 
Poinquinette was loud in his praises of this woman, 
who could see and talk to spirits and was not afraid 
of them. 

She built a tent and camped alone for three days 
and nights at the scene of their labor. She set a 



Tarkar Life in America 107 

table, provided with milk from a white cow, wine, 
and honey — inveigling the invisible ones and 
tempting them by food to give up the secret of the 
buried treasure. At the end of the third day her 
persuasions prevailed, and the spirits reluctantly 
made known the place. Next morning she walked 
to the spot and placed her foot where the men 
should dig. They fell to work and had not dug 
more than twenty minutes, before the top of 
the treasure-box was uncovered. They rapidly 
cleared the earth from around it and there lay 
before their eager wondering eyes a cedar chest 
which measured five feet in length, two and a half 
feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. It con- 
tained three hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
in gold, and Ebernezar Fisher, over-zealous and 
over-anxious, bored two holes in it with an auger. 
While he was boring the second, the woman warned 
him to stop — that the spirits were regretting their 
revelation — but Ebernezar, who was of stubborn 
temperament, bored on iinheedful of her warning. 
It was a bright day — not a cloud in the sky — the 
sunlight filtered through the trees and fell in 
strong beams upon the auger. The other men, 



io8 Historic Sketches of the South 

standing to one side, watched it glinting on the 
steel. Again the woman warned Fisher, and as 
she spoke his arm was wrenched from the auger. 
Almost at the same instant a black cloud swept 
across the sky, an awful gust of wind bent the 
great trees until they looked as if they would 
break, a crash of thunder and a blinding flash of 
lightning and the box disappeared! Then all 
was clear and bright again. It was a spirit storm 
— purely local, and seen only by the searchers 
after treasure. "Then all of us had to come away 
like sick cats and with aching hearts, because we 
hated to see a treasure like that disappear. It 's 
there somewhere to-day — and wherever it is, 
Ebernezar Fisher's auger is still sticking in it." 

Another time they received intimation that 
they should go to Meaher's hummock and hunt a 
mound and some trees bearing marks like an 
inverted E; then walk so many feet in a certain 
direction and dig. On this occasion they took 
old Adam Boone, a negro who was supposed to 
have found many hidden treasures. They found 
the marked trees and the mound, which was six 
or seven feet high and looked as if it had been 




Charlee. 



Tarkar Life in America 109 

built by man. They had just arrived, identified 
the spot, and were grouped around it talking. 
Ebernezar Fisher, who was tall, stood with the 
butt of his gun resting on the ground, and held it 
with one hand near the end of the barrel. Both 
hammers were down. Old Adam Smith was say- 
ing, "I 've been hearin' of this place a long time. 
They say several men were killed and buried here." 
As the last words were uttered, one barrel of 
Fisher's gun went off, and he was so startled that 
he threw it from him ; Charlie Tell who was sitting 
on the ground near him caught it and as he did so 
the other barrel went off. Needless to add that 
the seekers for gold left the spot as qmckly as they 
could and have never gone back again. 

There are places in the woods and among the 
hills where no one can go — unless very brave and 
then not to stay long — for there are sounds as of 
the march of soldiers, the clank of their swords, and 
the orders of the captains. Whoever goes to these 
places will have to fight the spirits and there is no 
hope of overpowering them, for they change their 
forms into those of many * ' varmints " and especially 
do they affect the ones that the intruder most fears. 



no Historic Sketches of the South 

Some of these superstitions were repeated to 
the Tarkars with the hope of drawing them out 
and learning just what they beHeved. They 
accepted them and Olouala offered the solution 
of the spirits' faithful guardianship as it had been 
explained to him by American negroes. To make 
this guardianship effective the promise must be 
obtained during the life of the body. "Suppose 
some one has a treasure he wishes to conceal — 
perhaps to bury. He may pick out you who he 
has never seen before. Perhaps he asks, ' Do you 
want to earn ten dollars?' Of course you do, so 
you go with him. After he gets to the place where 
he wishes to bury the gold, he says, 'I have a 
treasure here which I wish to bury. But I have 
to go away — will you promise to watch it iintil I 
come back?' You unsuspectingly promise and 
as you do so you are killed and your body buried 
with the treasure that your spirit may guard it 
forever." Instead of a person a faithful and 
intelligent dog or horse may be sacrificed. This, 
however, is not a Tarkar superstition, but is com- 
mon to our negro and Creole population. The 
Tarkars during their long residence have explored 



I 



Tarkar Life in America iii 

every foot of this region in their searches for game, 
berries, fruits, and herbs and they have never had 
any encounters with the Magazine Point ghosts 
or any intimation of their presence. Kazoola, 
however, naively intimated that he would prefer 
not to know where they were located, as he might 
have occasion to go to these places, and if he did 
not know where these ghosts were supposed to be, 
he would not be annoyed or frightened by seeing 
them. 

The life of the Tarkars in America has not been 
characterized by the superstitions ascribed to 
them; instead their history has been one of hard 
work, cooperation, self-sacrifice, and a deep long- 
ing for home. Their progress has been deeply 
interesting. Almost entirely cut off from white 
influence — and that with which they came in 
contact during their early years in this country 
could scarcely inspire them with confidence, for 
they are keenly watchful and observed the ad- 
vantage which one white took over another — yet 
protected by our laws, they have worked out their 
destiny with much more success and honor to 
themselves than the generality of American-bom 



112 Historic Sketches of the South 

negroes or of the free blacks who were carried by 
the American Colonization Society back to Africa, 
and whose interests have been guarded and fur- 
thered by philanthropists. 

When the Tarkars first came to Magazine Point 
all days were alike to them ; they went about doing 
on Sundays as on other days. Some American 
negroes who had become interested in them and 
who were really their friends requested them not 
to work on Sundays but to gather all their women 
and children and go with them. They were thus 
introduced to a church. There they were told 
that the God who lived in the sky had sent a book 
to the people of the earth, telling them how they 
must live. Simple and believing, they readily 
accepted what was told. The Old Testament and 
the dualistic dogma of a God and a Devil made the 
same appeal to them that it had to the American 
negro — there was the ready response of the primi- 
tive imagination to a primitive story. In them 
they found an amplification of the gropings of their 
own minds into the spiritual. It soothed their 
sorrows and gave them hope. Their faith became 
a simple one, and that of the few old survivors is 



Tarkar Life in America 113 

one of resignation, hope, and a perfect trust. Po- 
leete has said: "We know not why these troubles 
came upon us, but we are all God's children — 
we not always see the way, but his hands guide us 
and shape our ends." Kazoola, in speaking of the 
death of his wife and of all his children, likened 
God to the doctor who " gives us bad medicine — it 's 
hard to swallow, but the doctor gives it to us to 
do us good. We don't understand why." Though 
Kazoola has an intense longing for home, he 
regards his advent to America as a part of the 
goodness of God and enjoys telling how after 
Foster had bought him at Whydah, he was stolen 
by one of Dahomey's men and hidden imder the 
white house. While concealed, he heard the surf 
upon the beach. Urged by an innate curiosity 
about the mechanism of things, he stole from his 
hiding-place and climbed upon the stockade fence ; 
"I hear the noise of the sea on shore, an' I wanta 
see what maka dat noise, an' how dat water 
worka — how it fell on shore an' went back again. 
I saw some of my people in a little boat and I holler 
to them. Then Captain Foster spied me, an' he 
say, 'Oh hee! Oh hee!' an' pulla me down. An' 



114 Historic Sketches of the South 

I was the last to go. Supposy I been lef behind 
— what become of Kazoola? Or supposy de ship 
turna over, an' de sharks eat us. Oh Lor'! God 
is good!" 

Mrs. Foster, who always lived near the Tarkars, 
said they have always been gentle, amiable, and 
honest and much better than the average American 
negro ; that it was their perseverance and religious 
zeal which built the several churches which are 
now at Magazine Point. There was only one 
among them who proved unregenerate — old Zooma 
who still lives — but she belonged to another tribe, 
the Tarkbar, and presents totally different 
characteristics; also different color, physical de- 
velopment, and tribal marks. She has been seen 
to make a cross and spit in the middle of it. The 
others do not seem to understand her motive. 

After the surrender the Tarkars wished to go 
back to their own country but had no money. 
They concluded to save. They worked in the 
mills for a dollar a day, but could not save without 
help, so they said to their wives, "Now we want 
to go home and it takes a lot of money. You 
must help us save. You see fine clothes — you 



Tarkar Life in America 115 

must not crave them." The wives promised and 
repHed: " You see fine clothes and new hats — now 
don't you crave them either. We will work to- 
gether." They made six dollars a week. Of this 
they cotild save two dollars, sometimes three, 
but they had rent to pay and found they could 
not get ahead that way, for it would take a lot of 
money to get home. Among themselves they 
talked over the injustice of their position — how 
Meaher had brought them from their native land 
and how they now had neither home nor country. 
Kazoola, who seems to have always been a spokes- 
man, concluded he would present their case to 
Meaher. Soon after he was cutting timber (just 
back of where the schoolhouse now stands), 
Captain Tim Meaher came along and sat upon a 
felled tree. Kazoola recognized this to be his 
opportunity, stopped work, and stood looking at 
Meaher, all his emotion speaking through his 
expressive face. The captain looked up from 
the stick he was whittling and struck by the 
sorrow in the man's face asked: 

"Kazoola, what makes you so sad?" 

"I grieve for my home." 



ii6 Historic Sketches of the South 

"But you 've got a good home." 

"Captain Tim, how big is Mobile?" 

"I don't know, I've never been to the four 
corners." 

"If you give Kazoola all Mobile, that railroad, 
and the banks of Mobile Kazoola does not want 
them for this is not home." 

When the old man tells this his face reflects 
overwhelming grief — in his eyes there is the far- 
away vision of home, and in a low voice he moans, 
" Oh Lor' ! Oh Lor' ! " Then he regains himself 
and goes on with his narrative. 

" Captain Tim, you brought us from our country 
where we had land and home. You made us 
slaves. Now we are free, without country, land, 
or home. Why don't you give us a piece of this 
land and let us build for ourselves an African 
Town?" 

Kazoola relates Meaher's reply very dramatically. 

"Thou fool! Thinkest thou I will give you 
property upon property? You do not belong to 
me now ! ' ' 

The Tarkars concluded to buy. When one 
reached this conclusion, the others said: "If you 




J 



Drawn by Emma Roche. 



Olouala. 



Tarkar Life in America 117 

are going to buy, we will too." They bought 
property from Meaher, who made them no con- 
cessions. They worked and saved, going half 
clad and living upon half rations. Though ac- 
customed in their own country to Nature's lux- 
uries, they now lived on molasses and corn-bread 
or mush (boiled corn-meal) . The men worked in 
the mills and their wives helped by planting 
gardens and fruit trees and becoming venders of 
fruit and vegetables. Their Tarkar home began 
to be a chimera; day after day new ties pushed 
it farther away. 

Having no head of the tribe, and understanding 
that in a country of different institutions a king 
would be incongruous, they selected Charlee 
(Orsey, in Tarkar), Gumpa (African Peter), and 
Jaybee as judges to preside over the colony, to 
arbitrate their differences, and direct their lives. 
When disagreements came up, word would be 
sent each member that there would be a meeting 
at a certain place after dark — their only leisure 
time — possibly at the home of one of the judges. ^ 

' These meetings probably account for the reports which have 
been recurrent that the Tarkars met secretly and practiced 
barbaric rites. 



ii8 Historic Sketches of the South 

The offenders would be given a hearing before the 
whole colony — each side would be weighed and 
each reprimanded with a warning to "go and keep 
the peace." If they again broke it, or renewed 
their disagreements, they were punished — Jaybee, 
Gumpa, or Charlee administering a whipping to the 
culprits. Of these judges, there lives to-day only 
Charlee, who has passed the century mark and is ' 
tottering on the brink of the grave. Yet the nine 
surviving Tarkars, and each of these has seen his 
three-score years and ten, look upon him as the 
head, observe his admonitions, and never disobey 
him. His face is one of the most kindly and he is 
known among his people as never having disputed 
or disagreed with any one. As old as they are, if 
Charlee told them they could not do a thing, no 
matter how strong the desire, they would not 
disobey. The judges were not considered above 
reproach. If any of the colony saw one of them 
doing that which was wrong, he would be rebuked: 
"We saw you do this thing. It is not right. How 
do you expect us to do right if you do not show 
us the way?" 

'Charlee too has recently passed away, 1914. 



Tarkar Life in America 119 

About ten years after the close of the Civil War, 
when the South was still largely under carpetbag 
regime, interest in elections was intense and the 
outcome of vital importance to the community. 
Opposing parties used almost any means at their 
command to obtain votes. Meaher went among 
the Tarkars, explaining the methods and signi- 
ficance of voting and urging them to vote the 
Democratic ticket. He was followed by some 
Republicans who promised them great rewards. 
They talked this new thing over among themselves 
and concluded that by voting the Republican 
ticket they would gain much good. On election 
day, Olouala, Poleete, and Kazoola walked, one 
behind the other (a Tarkar custom), to the polls 
at Whistler. Meaher was there ; he pointed them 
out, "See those Africans? Don't let them vote — 
they are not of this country." They were refused 
so walked to McGuire's, but Meaher who had 
been watching them and knew their persistency, 
had ridden ahead and forestalled them ; they were 
again refused. This only whetted their desire 
and their determination, and they walked on down 
St. Stephen's Road to the next voting place. 



120 Historic Sketches of the South 

Arriving there, Meaher was just getting off his 
horse. "Don't let those Africans vote — they 
have no right — they are not of this country." 
Defeated again, the three now wanted to vote so 
badly, that they put their hands together, raised 
them to the sky, and prayed God that He would 
permit them to vote. Strengthened, they walked 
on to Mobile and at the polls on St. Francis Street 
told their experience. They were informed that 
by paying one dollar they could vote. This they 
did and received a paper which they still treasure. 
It was their one experience in politics, and it was 
satisfying for they accomplished what they had 
set out to do, though the great promises never 
materialized. 

Of the one hundred and sixteen Africans who 
were brought to this country in the Clotilde, there 
are only eight living: five women, Abache (Clara 
Turner), Monabee (Kitty Cooper), Shamber, 
Kanko (who married Jim Dennison), and Zooma; 
and three men, Poleete, Kazoola (Cudjoe 
Lewis), and Olouala (Orsey Kan). Their Tarkar 
names have been used in this narrative at 
their request. They love them and with some 



Tarkar Life in America 121 

pathos asked that they be used, because in some 
way these names might drift back to their native 
home, where some might remember them. This 
small fragment gathers on Sundays after church 
at the home of Poleete, Kazoola, or Abache and 
discuss among themselves the things pertaining 
to their welfare, and they never part without 
speaking of their African home and telling some 
incident of that beloved place. Kazoola says he 
often thinks that if he had wings he would fly 
back; then he remembers that all he has lies in 
American soil — the wife who came from his native 
land, who was his helpmate and companion 
through the many years, and all his children. It 
was at some of these Sunday afternoon gatherings 
that he made the parables about his wife, Albine 
(Celie), which are a solace to him in his sorrow 
and loneliness. The Sunday after her death, the 
Tarkars were sitting with Kazoola in his home. 
He sat with head bowed down, grief -stricken, and 
speaking no word. They said, "Lift up your 
head, Kazoola, and speak with us." Kazoola 
lifted his head; "I will make a parable. Kazoola 
and Albine have gone to Mobile together. They 



122 Historic Sketches of the South 

get on the train to go home and sit side by side. 
The conductor comes along and says to Kazoola, 
'Where are you going to get off?' and Kazoola 
replies, 'Mount Vernon.' The conductor then 
asks Albine, 'Where are you going to get off?' 
and she replies 'Plateau.'^ Kazoola surprised. 
turns to Albine and asks, ' Why, Albine ! How 
is this ? Why do you say you are going to get off 
at Plateau?' She answers, 'I must get off.' The 
train stops and Albine gets off. Kazoola stays on 
— he is alone. But old Kazoola has not reached 
Mount Vernon yet — he is still journeying on." 

On the next Sunday they were again gathered 
at Kazoola's house ; again he sat with bowed head, 
and again they asked him to lift up his head and 
make another parable. 

"Suppose Charlee comes to my house and wants 
to go on to Poleete's. He has an umbrella which 
he leaves in my care. When he comes back he 
asks for his umbrella — must I give it to him or 
must I keep it?" 

The listening Tarkars cried out, "No, Kazoola! 
You cannot keep it — it is not yours!" 

' Mount Vernon is some miles beyond Plateau. 



Tarkar Life in America 123 

And Kazoola answered, "Neither could I keep 
Albine; she was just left in my care."^ 

Kazoola never married again; he sees Albin6 
everywhere about the house. Everything re- 
minds him of her. One day he was working in his 
corn-patch, weeding out superfluous stalks. He 
came to two growing together — the root of one 
interwined with the other. He started to pull 
one out, but something within told him to stop, 
that thus had he and Albine grown together and 
one stalk could not be pulled up without hurting 
the other. So he saved the two, giving them 
especial care, and he was rewarded by each bear- 
ing four ears of corn. These he was going to save 
for seed and grieves that a cow should have gotten 
in and destroyed them. The old man is cheerful 
— even merry — possessing a keen sense of humor 
and a lively imagination. To appreciate him 
fully he must be surprised at his home. There 
he will be found probably working in his garden 



' When Albine first came to America she was very fat and 
refused to eat except just enough to keep her aHve. When she 
grew to have confidence in the whites, she confided to Mrs. 
Foster, "Albind not eat when she first come to America, because 
Albin^ know she fat an' did not want white people to eat her." 



124 Historic Sketches of the South 

barefooted, trousers rolled up above his knees; 
his costume clean but a marvelous piece of patch- 
work, even the old derby upon his head a much 
mended one. His patches need elicit no sympathy, 
for patching is an accomplishment in which he 
takes keen delight; even in the old days when his 
Albine was alive, she would wash his clothes and 
lay them aside for him to patch during the evenings 
when the day's work was done. 

The Tarkars range in color from light to a very 
dark brown. All bear upon their faces the Tarkar 
tribal marks — two lines between the eyes and 
three on the cheek. While quite distinct, these 
marks are not disfiguring. Their teeth bear the 
marks of family and of kinship and vary in each* 
The process of marking the teeth was by pecking 
with a stone im.plement. The lower corners of 
Poleete's two front teeth where they meet are 
pecked off, forming a wedge-shaped opening like 
an inverted V. When Kazoola's teeth are closed, 
on one side there is a circular opening which was 
formed by cutting off parts of a half-dozen teeth. 
Six of Abache's upper front teeth are trimmed to 
make a convex opening. The Tarkars differ in 



Tarkar Life in America 125 

featiire from the American negro; it is a subtle 
difference but runs through the whole face. Their 
heads differ structurally — the line from the fore- 
head to the chin is nearer straight. They have 
more top head and there is a fullness indicating 
plenty of intelligence — a possession they have 
exhibited in their neat homes and thrifty lives. 
Some of them have even learned to read ; this was 
taught them by their children who have profited 
by the public schools. Poleete's constant com- 
panion is a small, much worn New Testament. 
Their countenances naturally vary with their 
temperaments. Abache's and Kazoola's are as 
open as a book — intensely emotional and capable 
of expressing very deep feeling. None have 
gotten over the shock of their early experience. 
When these are referred to there comes into 
Kazoola's and Abache's faces unspeakable and 
indescribable anguish. Poleete's is like a mask, 
unchanging, unscrutable, except for the eyes, 
and these — small, deep-set, watchful — are almost 
uncanny. 

Among themselves they speak the Tarkar lan- 
guage. Their English is very broken and is not 



126 Historic Sketches of the South 

always intelligible even to those who have lived 
among them for many years. It has more the 
sound of the dialect spoken by Italians than that 
spoken by the negroes. They make almost con- 
stant use of the "a" sound as a terminal — looka, 
pulla, worka, etc. Their sentences are short and 
vivid. The few words of old Gumpa, "M}^ 
people sold me and your people bought me," 
accompanied by his expression, told his whole 
history. 

They are extremely clean both about their 
persons and their homes, and one of their strongest 
objections to the average American negro is un- 
cleanliness. Abache parts her hair in the middle 
and combs it neatly back. She uses face powder, 
because it is refreshing and leaves a cleanly feeling. 
The other women are very old and feeble, except 
Kanko who, though old, works as a man. Her 
especial occupation is the breeding and raising of 
a fine strain of hogs. The Tarkars are very con- 
siderate of each other, and their intercourse is 
marked by kindness, charity, and harmony. 

In strong contrast to the Tarkars is old Zooma, 
who is possibly the last Tarkbar. Rendered 




Drawn bv Emma Roche. 



Charlee, Head of the Tarkars. 



Tarkar Life in America 127 

almost helpless by a century and more of years 
and many pounds of superfluous flesh, she sits for 
the most part silent and brooding in her squalid 
hut. If near the door or window there are no 
softening shadows, and the light reveals all her 
fat, brutal old ugliness — an ugliness, accentuated 
by disfiguring tribal marks — three deep gashes 
meeting at the bridge of the nose, and running 
diagonally across each cheek. Her underlip hangs 
away as if it had been subjected in her native land 
to some kind of African beautifying process. Her 
hair is white and the skin of her hands and feet 
wrinkled, resembling in texture that of an elephant, 
and bearing the curious gray color seen in the 
complexions of very old negroes. It is almost 
impossible to understand her broken phrases, but 
a daughter acts as interpreter. Brooding, she is 
pathetic; aroused and speaking of home she is 
tragic. She has in common with the Tarkars the 
same pitiful history and the same despair, without 
their resignation. For each and all. Heaven could 
hold no promise so rapturous as just one last 
vision of home. Such a vision that comes as they 
sit together, which bows their old heads, lays 



128 Historic Sketches of the South 

silent fingers upon their lips, and speaks to their 
aching hearts of perpetual summer, fertile lands, 
abundance of fruit — of youth, plenty, and peace — 
their Land of Long Ago. 



CHAPTER X 

IMPRESSIONS OF ALABAMA IN 1846^ 

The trip of Lafayette through this country in 
the twenties was more or less spectacular, and the 
places he visited are to-day pointed out as historic, 
yet only twenty years later Lyell, whose name will 
go down the ages linked with Goethe, Lamarck, 
and Darwin, covered much the same ground, and 
it is only in scientific works that one is reminded 
of the fact. In recent reading, after meeting with 
several references to his stay in Alabama, I be- 
came interested, and it was with intense delight 
that I was carried back and saw our own section 
through the eyes of that wonderful observer and 
thinker. All awe of Charles Lyell, scientist and 
arch-destroyer of the anthropocentric idea which 
for so many centuries fettered the world of thought, 
was at once dispelled, for there was that in his 
charming geniality that makes the "whole world 

'Reprinted from South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1908. 

9 129 



I30 Historic Sketches of the South 

kin" — even a Charles Lyell and the pine-woods 
squatter, whose hospitality he often accepted 
when on geologic excursions. 

Lyell made two trips to the United States — the 
first in 1841-42, which furnished material for his 
Travels in North America. He came as far south 
as Savannah. His Travels in the United States is 
the record of his second visit, when Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana formed a 
part of his itinerary. Aside from the geologic 
importance of these two works, there could scarcely 
be a more faithful portrayal of American manners, 
customs, and peculiarities. They were largely 
instrumental in ameliorating British animosity 
by giving the English a better and kindlier under- 
standing of Americans. At the time of their 
publication, they naturally found in this country 
a circiilation only among the few, and are now rare 
books. His observations on the social conditions 
that made the South unique and that have been 
obliterated during the lapse of a half century are 
deeply interesting to the student of to-day. 

On January 15, 1846, we find Lyell and his wife 
entering Macon, Georgia, by train. His eye was 




Kazoola. 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 131 

immediately attracted by "a wooden edifice of 
very peculiar structure and picturesque form, 
crowning one of the hills." Learning that it was 
a blockhouse that had been in real service as a 
fort against Indians only twenty-five years before, 
when this frontier knew not the white man's 
habitat, it was with a mixed feeling of amusement 
and incongruity that he received the information 
that a conspicuous building nearby was a * ' female 
seminary, lately established by the Methodists, 
where all young ladies take degrees." 

From Macon to Columbus, Georgia, he had his 
first experience in a Southern stage-coach which, 
while novel, must have proved far from comfort- 
able, for he did not forget to record the jolts caused 
by miserable roads and reckless driving. Leaving 
Columbus he was soon in the undulating pine- 
lands of Alabama, the monotony of which was 
frequently broken by swamps of palmetto and 
magnolia. The spirit of the pines must have sung 
to him, too, for the "sound of the wind in the 
boughs of the long-leaved pine" always reminded 
him of the "waves breaking on a distant shore, and 
it was agreeable to hear it swelling gradually, then 



132 Historic Sketches of the South 

dying away as the breeze rose and fell." Near 
Chehaw, the stage stopped at a log cabin in the 
woods for the passengers to dine. It did not look 
promising, and Lyell was ready to "put up with 
bad fare," but on entering found on the table 
"a wild turkey roasted, venison steaks, and a 
partridge-pie, all the product of the neighboring 
forest." Noticing the stumps of many pines, he 
counted the rings of annual growth to ascertain 
how long it would take to replace such a forest. 
The oldest tree that he examined measured four 
feet in diameter at three feet above the base, and 
showed three hundred and twenty rings. He also 
found the ravines that are common throughout 
Southern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to 
be of recent formation and caused by deforesta- 
tion, showing the tertiary regions and also part 
of the cretaceous strata which have ' ' always been 
as destructible as now" to have been from the 
beginning covered with dense forests. Where 
the trees have been cut, the sun's heat on the clay 
often causes cracks, and when the rains come in 
semi-tropical torrents these deepen until such 
ravines as are familiar to Mobilians about Spring 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 133 

Hill are the result — only they are of more rapid 
growth. 

At Chehaw they took train for Montgomery. 
Even at that early time, and in a region "where 
the schoolmaster has not been much abroad," 
we meet the prototype of the newsboy of to-day ; 
Lyell's picture of him unconcernedly jimiping 
on and off moving trains is the "butcher-boy" 
we all know. One boy was calling out in the midst 
of a pine-barren, "a novel by Paul de Kock — 
the Bulwer of France — all the go ! — more popular 
than the Wandering Jew." Lyell, having bought 
newspapers promiscuously throughout the many 
States he visited, found our press to be in every 
way on an equal with that of Great Britain. A 
large portion of the papers was "devoted to literary 
extracts, to novels, travels, tales, and often more 
serious subjects." 

Reaching Montgomery, he remained there a 
few days examining the geologic formations and 
remains of that region. It was his intention to 
go directly to Tuscaloosa, only one hundred miles 
distant by land, but every one advised him that 
he would at that season save both time and money 



134 Historic Sketches of the South 

by taking an eight hundred mile trip down the 
Alabama River by boat to Mobile, and up again 
on the Tombigbee. The Amaranth was scheduled 
to leave at ten o'clock, January 28, 1846. Ac- 
customed to Northern punctuality, they went 
down on time, and learned with some annoyance 
that she might not sail until the next day. It was 
his first sight of our "magnificent Southern river 
boats." He and Mrs. Lyell made up their minds 
to look on it as "their inn and read and write 
there" and were soon enjoying "its luxuries which 
Southern manners and a hot climate require." 
He describes very fully the peculiar construction 
which adapts the boats to rivers which rise and 
fall rapidly. When recording that some of them 
could float in two feet of water, he adds, "but 
they cannot quite realize the boast of a western 
captain, that he could sail wherever it was damp." 
It would be too much to write in detail of ail 
the things which interested Lyell, for nothing seems 
to have escaped him. At each landing, however, 
he collected many cretaceous fossils, so concluded 
to stop a few days at Claiborne, whose bluff had 
long been known to geologists as "classic ground," 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 135 

having already yielded four hundred species of 
tertiary shells, belonging to the Eocene forma- 
tion. He notes, too, the finding of a fossil zeuglo- 
don in the same cliff by Mr. Hale of Mobile. 
"The morning after our arrival, January 29th, the 
thermometer stood at eighty degrees F. in the 
shade, and the air was as balmy as an English 
summer day. Before the house stood a row of 
Pride-of-India trees ladened with bunches of 
yellow berries. I had often been told by the 
negroes that the American robin 'got drunk' on 
this fruit, and we now had an opportunity of 
witnessing its narcotic properties ; for we saw some 
children playing with one of these birds before the 
house, having caught it after it had eaten freely 
of these berries. My wife, seeing that the robin 
was in no small danger of perishing, bought it of 
the children for some sugar-plums, and it soon 
revived in our room, and flew out of the window. 
In the evening we enjoyed a sight of one of those 
glorious sunsets, the beauty of which in these 
latitudes is so striking, when the clouds and sky 
are lighted up with streaks of brilliant yellow, red, 
and green, which, if a painter should represent 



136 Historic Sketches of the South 

faithfully, might seem as exaggerated and gaudy 
as the colors of an American forest in autumn 
when compared with European woods." 

He crossed the river to visit the Blounts at 
Woodlawn. Leaving his wife with Mrs. Blount, 
he went with Mr. Blount by carriage to Clarks- 
ville, where the enormous fossil zeuglodons had 
been found. "The district we passed through 
was situated in the fork of the Alabama and Tom- 
beckbee rivers, where the aboriginal forest was 
only broken here and there by a few clearings. 
At Macon my attention was forcibly called to 
the newness of things by my friend's pointing out 
to me the ground where there had been a bloody 
fight with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and how 
the clerk of the Circuit Court was the last sur- 
vivor of those who had won the battle." The 
Indian paths, still tractable through the forests 
near Tuscaloosa, awakened the same feeling. On 
his return he and his wife crossed to Claiborne 
to await the Mobile steamer, and he expresses his 
pleasure at finding it, the Amaranth, commanded 
by his "old friend Captain Bragdon." 

Reaching Mobile, the Tuscaloosa steamer was 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 137 

ready to start, so they were soon northward 
bound on the Tombeckbee, then so high "that the 
trees of both banks seemed to be growing in a 
lake." Arriving at Tuscaloosa where there was a 
"flourishing college" he was met by Mr, Brumley, 
the professor of chemistry who at once conducted 
him to the outlying coal-fields. He found the 
coal, even of the strata exposed to the surface to 
be "excellent quality and highly bituminous." 
Here there is a bit of justification in Huxley's 
criticism of Lyell's aversion "to look beyond the 
veil of stratified rocks," for while he notes with 
seeming satisfaction the imprints of the fossil 
plants in the black shale to be exactly the same as 
those existing in the "ancient coal-measures of 
Europe and America," there is no foreshadowing 
of the explanation given by recent geology and 
astronomy, that even as late as the early carboni- 
ferous era, there were no seasons, the earth being 
wrapped in a uniform, vaporous warmth greater 
than the heat now existing in the tropics; a heat 
which came not from the sun, but the earth itself. 
One proof lies in the fact that irrespective of lati- 
tude, the same organic remains are found — their 



138 Historic Sketches of the South 

nearest of kin of to-day living only in the tropics; 
also that there are no rings of annual growth in 
carboniferous tree-life. 

Lyell and Professor Brumley extending their 
wanderings, "entered about thirty-three miles 
northeast of Tuscaloosa a region called Rooke's 
Valley, where rich beds of iron-stone and lime- 
stone bid fair, by their proximity to the coal, to 
become one day a source of great mineral wealth." 
He was not only indebted to Professor Brumley 
for much scientific information, but also to Mr. 
Bernard, the teacher of astronomy, who showed 
him some "double stars and constellations not 
visible in England," — the telescope a recent acqui- 
sition from London. Mrs. Lyell also made many 
friends in Tuscaloosa, among them two ladies 
who were reading as a "pastime Goethe and 
Schiller in the original." 

From Tuscaloosa to Mobile Lyell had splendid 
chances of studying the geological character of 
the country, and he frequently expresses apprecia- 
tion of the courtesy and assistance always given 
him throughout Alabama, contrasting it with the 
"ignorant wonder" the fossil hunter inspires in 




Zooma, the Last Tarkbar. 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 139 

unfrequented districts of England, France, and 
Italy. He was anxious to examine the calcareous 
bluff at St. Stephen's. Night fell before they 
reached it, but Captain Lavargy stopped, said he 
could take on wood, gave him a boat and two 
negroes bearing pine torches, thus making it 
possible for him to thoroughly explore the whole 
cliff and find many fossils. 

Mobile again claims him on February 21, 1846, 
and flaunts her spring forwardness by touches of 
green on the cypress and cotton trees, and scarlet 
seed-vessels on the rubra. "In the gardens there 
were jonquils and snow-drops in flower, and for 
the first time, we saw that beautiful evergreen, the 
yellow- jessamine, in full bloom, trailed along the 
wall of Dr. Hamilton's house." Anxious for his 
first sight of the Gulf of Mexico, he drove with 
Dr. Hamilton, the Presbyterian minister, to the 
light-house (situated on Choctaw Point and washed 
away by the storm of 1852), and, from the tower 
had a "splendid view of the city to the North, and 
to the South the noble bay of Mobile, fourteen 
miles across." He then went to the bay which 
lay "smooth and unruffled, the woods coming 



140 Historic Sketches of the South 

down everywhere to its edge." He noted the 
immense amount of driftwood, dug up bivalve- 
shelled gnathodons that live in our mud-banks, 
and that will in future ages indicate the position 
of our rivers. He found Mobile to be built upon 
a deposit of these shells, the stratification of 
which proved that it had been thrown up by the 
waves. Our delta, in the soft mud of which 
cattle are frequently mired and which receives 
carcasses washed down by the rivers and thrown 
up by the sea, exemplifies the formation of such 
regions as the Fayum of Egypt — the elephant's 
ancestral home — nov/ covered by desert sands, 
but which is each day yielding priceless treasure 
to the paleontologist. 

On February 23d, the James L. Day, bound for 
New Orleans, "sailed out of the beautiful bay of 
Mobile in the evening," carrying aboard Charles 
Lyell and his wife. 

At the time of Lyell 's visit, Alabama lay strug- 
gling in the grasp of that spirit of unrest which from 
the most remote antiquity as often obsessed people 
of the Aryan race, calling them ever westwards 
towards the setting sun. Everywhere he met 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 141 

"movers" — Texas masking as the Promised Land, 
beckoning to the cultured as to the ignorant. 
Adventure prompted many, others knew not why 
they were going, some were "eaten out by their 
negroes," and one informant said: "If we remain 
here, we are reduced to the alternative of high 
taxes to pay the interest of money so improvi- 
dently borrowed from England, or to suffer the 
disgrace of repudiation, which would be doubly 
shameful, because the money was received in hard 
cash, and lent out, often rashly by the State to 
farmers for agricultural improvements. Besides, 
all the expenses of the Government were in reality 
defrayed during several years by borrowed money 
and the burthen of the debt thrown on posterity. 
The facility with which your English capitalists, 
in 1 82 1, lent their cash to a State from which the 
Indians were not yet expelled without reflecting 
on the migratory nature of the white population 
is astonishing. The planters, who got the grants 
of your money and spent it, have nearly all of them 
moved off and settled beyond the Mississippi." 
But Lyell had faith in Alabama's natural resources, 
which he felt were so great that only a moderate 



142 Historic Sketches of the South 

amount of economy would be necessary to sur- 
mount all embarrassments. 

Texas and the probability of war with England 
over the Oregon Question were topics discussed 
on every hand. Lyell would hear the English 
adversely criticized and such boasts as "we have 
whipped them twice, and should whip them a 
third time," but where his nationality was known, 
he says, "never once were any speeches, uncour- 
teous in their tone towards my country, uttered 
in my hearing." 

On his geologizing trips, which would have often- 
times been hard on any one not riding his own 
hobby, he was forced to stop where night over- 
took him, so that even the habits of the "crackers " 
became familiar to him. "In many houses I 
hesitated to ask for water or towels, for fear of 
giving offense . . . nor could I venture to ask 
any one to rub a thick coat of mud off my trousers, 
lest I should be thought to reflect on members of 
the family, who had no idea of indulging in such 
luxuries themselves. I felt the want of a private 
bed-room, but very soon came to regard it as a 
privilege to be allowed even a bed to myself." In 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 143 

his wanderings, he also met " clay-eaters" ^ — a peo- 
ple curious in their cravings for certain kinds of 
clay. Their peculiar green complexion indicating 
anemia, which usually terminates in dropsy, was 
formerly considered a sequence to the gratification 
of this abnormal appetite, but is now supposed to 
be a result of a pathogenic parasite found in the 
small intestine. * The type is still a most familiar 
one in the hill-country just west of Mobile. 

When dubious about safet}^ from highwaymen, 
Lyell was assured that in the South this class 
was unknown; the working class being the slave 
class there was no poor made desperate by want. 
And that the Texas wars had relieved the different 
communities of their dare-devil spirits. 

' There is very little literature about this class which is found 
in many parts of the world, and even that consists mostly of 
references to them by travelers and ethnologists. The fullest 
account with which I am familiar is an article by my uncle, the 
late Frank L. James, Ph.D., M.D., "The Geophagi, or Dirt 
Eaters," which appeared in the National Druggist, of March, 
1900. Microscopic examinations made by him of the "dirt" 
used by our Alabama, Georgia, and Carolina geophagians showed 
it to be a ferruginous argilla about ten per cent, diatomaceous. 
The "dirt eaters" of the various countries do not eat any kind 
of clay, but uniformly affect an argillaceous substance, containing 
more or less infusorial matter. 

" Since the first publication of this article, hookworm investi- 
gations and treatment have become common in all infected 
districts of the South. 



144 Historic Sketches of the South 

Lyell was often amused and astonished at the 
Southerner's loyal support of an ultra- Democratic 
notion of white equality, which in practice must 
have been thoroughly uncongenial to all classes 
concerned. He visited a lawyer at his country 
home — the family a cultivated one, used to the 
best society of a large city — but the host regarded 
it as an obligation to invite Lyell 's driver, who 
was half Indian, to sit down to the table with 
them. Perhaps a consciousness that this boasted 
equality was more or less fictitious may have been 
responsible for the vindictive envy which flourished 
in the midst of this "aristocratic democracy." 
A jealousy so intense that a gentleman growing 
rich and settling in a quiet part of the country 
was apt to have his fences pulled down, cattle 
turned out to roam, and other indignities perpe- 
trated. Many anecdotes of the genuineness and 
prevalence of this feeling were told to Lyell. The 
daughter of a member of the Legislature visited 
Mobile, had a dress made with flounces according 
to the latest fashion, and on her return home wore 
it to a ball. At the next election her father was 
defeated, and on asking a former supporter the 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 145 

cause received the reply, "Do you think they 
would vote for you, after your daughter came to 
the ball in them fixings?" 

Lyell found drunkenness very common, yet 
heard many speak of the great temperance reform, 
it being no longer considered an insult to refuse 
to drink with one's host. While he saw no cruelty 
to slaves, he felt that when drunkenness was so 
general among the owners their power might 
often be an abusive one. He states that it was 
not the object of his visit to study slavery, but 
his interesting observations would fill a chapter 
and are characterized by a keenness and fairness 
which make them very valuable. The stories told 
him by disgruntled and misinformed Northern- 
ers had prepared him. for blood-curdling atrocities, 
but throughout Alabama he saw the negro in 
many phases: in his churches, about his pleasures, 
and at his occupations that ranged from farm- 
hand to mechanic; in the slave-market, as the 
indulged domestic, and as the faithful and cheer- 
ful follower of his master into new and unknown 
regions; and on no occasion had he reason to 
suspect maltreatment. When speaking to a 



146 Historic Sketches of the South 

Northern man of his favorable impressions, he 
was told that "great pains had been taken by the 
planters to conceal the true state of things" — 
that he had been "propitiated by hospitable 
attentions." Lyell found his own experience 
corroborated in a Tradesman s Journal, written 
by William Thompson, a Scotch weaver, who 
supported himself by his trade as he journeyed 
through the South. 

After seeing what contact with the whites had 
done for the negro, Lyell entertained very sanguine 
hopes of the race's intellectual and moral possi- 
bilities, and was impatient of what seemed to him 
unjust laws which restricted the black educationally 
and politically. His two-sided attitude is a bit 
disarming, but is explained by himself. "We are 
often thrown into opposite states of mind and 
feeling, according as the interest of the white or 
negro happens, for the moment, to claim our sym- 
pathy." But the following words embody an 
unbiased and a beautiful tribute to the influence of 
the Southerners: "In spite of prejudice and fear, 
and in defiance of stringent laws enacted against 
education, three million of a more enlightened and 



Impressions of Alabama in 1846 147 

progressive race are brought into contact with an 
equal number of laborers lately in a savage 
state, and taken from a continent where the 
natives have proved themselves, for many- 
thousand years, to be singularly unprogressive. 
Already their taskmasters have taught them 
to speak, with more or less accuracy, one 
of the noblest of languages, to shake off 
many old superstitions, to acquire higher ideals 
of morality, and habits of neatness and cleanli- 
ness, and have converted thousands of them 
to Christianity. Many they have emancipated, 
and the rest are gradually approaching to the 
condition of the ancient serfs of Europe half 
a century or more before their bondage died 
out. 

"All this has been done at an enormous sacrifice 
of time and money ; an expense, indeed, which all 
the Governments of Europe and all the Christian 
missionaries, whether Romanist or Protestant, 
could never have effected in five centuries. Even 
in the few States which I have already visited 
since I crossed the Potomac, several hundred 
thousand whites of all ages, among whom the 



148 Historic Sketches of the South 

children are playing by no means the least ef- 
fective part, are devoting themselves with greater 
or less activity to these involuntary educational 
exertions." 



THE END 



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